Rails is pretty crappy if you ask me. It's "omakase" which is Japanese for "acts according to what DHH wants despite what the community wants". And there's a lot of magic happening that isn't explained very well. There are better frameworks in Ruby. Ruby itself doesn't take all that long to be an expert at.
Though I could argue that all the languages pretty much take the same amount of time to become an expert. Just because some languages are supposedly higher-level than others doesn't mean that the complexity they allow you to tackle (and associated challenges as a programmer or "expert") is any less.
Especially since being a good programmer is more about design, choice of interfaces, reactivity to change, etc. which are by definition language agnostic.
I firmly disagree that Ruby requires any less effort than say C, C++, Java or LISP to become an expert.
I didn't mean to say that Ruby was less complex than C, I meant to say that if you take out the magic it is comprehensable and one can be good at it quickly enough just like a straightforward language like C. I agree that learning design, etc. is the real key in any language, thanks for pointing that out, because that's what everyone should focus on.
Ruby doesn't take long to be productive in. It is an utter pain to become expert in, for any reasonable definition of "expert". Fortunately it's fun enough that I don't mind the slog.
