I think that "bad technology" can kill a startup, but slightly different variations of good technology don't have much effect. Choose what you know/like best. And Ruby and Python are both in this latter category.
I think it's just that Ruby enjoyed a brief surge of hype which pushed it to the forefront of the startup founders' mind; this has now ebbed a bit and Python use rises up to its natural level.
I wonder if Ruby will come back a bit, though. There hasn't been much hype, but in the last few months the Ruby community has really gone for broke, with rails 3, ruby 1.9.2, rvm reaching maturity and bundler to handle dependencies. Things are changing so fast I think the magnitude of the changes haven't sunk in for most people but it's a whole new environment and really impressive IMO.
I gave up on having feet about a month ago. The stupid I hit my toe on the corner of the wall bug was enough for me. Have had plenty of times now where I've ignored that walls might have corners and I haven't banged my toes anymore. I don't know what's changed lately, but seems as if having feet have gotten quite buggy.
Personally when I bang my toes against a corner, I don't think about removing my feet just to prevent toe banging.
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Reductio ad absurdum aside, if I'm experiencing an issue in a browser, my first thought is to diagnose and fix the issue or find an expectable workaround rather than change to a browser with obvious privacy issues.
I think it's just that Ruby enjoyed a brief surge of hype which pushed it to the forefront of the startup founders' mind; this has now ebbed a bit and Python use rises up to its natural level.
I wonder if Ruby will come back a bit, though. There hasn't been much hype, but in the last few months the Ruby community has really gone for broke, with rails 3, ruby 1.9.2, rvm reaching maturity and bundler to handle dependencies. Things are changing so fast I think the magnitude of the changes haven't sunk in for most people but it's a whole new environment and really impressive IMO.