Particularly for small startups and self-funded projects, the most important factor in technology choice is almost always "How long does it take me to translate my idea into a working product?".
For me, I haven't yet found anything that matches the ability of Rails to quickly go from just an idea into something that you can start pitching to customers.
While Rails and the entire community is dizzyingly large, with rapid innovation, new libraries, and a new set of best practices seemingly every few months, this ability to quickly create stuff differentiates it from Java completely.
Rails is just the sweet spot for low enough bar of entry, power and expressiveness. It also offers you a proven way to get up on your feet easily.
But well, it's a fashion thing. People need new things, people need to kill the father, people need new chapels. Nevermind that what we have right now does the job perfectly and is lots of fun, we need something NEW.
I don't know. I'm running a business on a Rails site and it's sort of sucking right now in terms of what I can get done and how fast I can get it done. Why? Because learning rails isn't the easiest thing in the world any more especially when half of the application is custom work around to jury-rig different frameworks together.
One of the developers came to me just last week and showed me a POC in Java that was cleanly assembled, easy to understand, and lacked all the enterprisey stuff that scared me away from Java years ago. That's why I wrote the article.
I'm not burning the chapel to build a new one. I'm setting sail for the fatherland in search of Silk and Spices. (I didn't mean to make sense with that ending, but you read it, didn't you?)
It's surprising that you talk about "learning" Rails though.
I am not an entrepreneur so take this is a shovelful of salt, but I wouldn't venture into creating a business on a technology that I have to learn along the way.
Also, I am now confused that Rails is turning into Java, yet you recently saw a beautiful piece of Java. Rails is just like Java and its "darker" Enterprise Side ™, you get to pick and choose what you want to use, no one is forcing RefineryCMS and Devise and whatnot down your text editor :D
I, for one, would love to see a follow up post which discusses specific things Java allowed you to do faster/clearer/better in that context. ... if you're so inclined. It might also be neat to hear about which Java libraries were in play and how they compare to Ruby equivalents.
For me, I haven't yet found anything that matches the ability of Rails to quickly go from just an idea into something that you can start pitching to customers.
While Rails and the entire community is dizzyingly large, with rapid innovation, new libraries, and a new set of best practices seemingly every few months, this ability to quickly create stuff differentiates it from Java completely.