I think you're missing my point. The early Ruby and Rails community I remember was a collection of very smart and explorative programmers who wanted to build cool stuff with this interesting language. People were trying out DSLs -- sure they could've used LISP -- but Ruby's metaprogramming was inviting and was a reason for the succinct Rails syntax which was a selling point compared to say Java's cumbersome approach.

The speed of trying stuff out (even if it wasn't super efficient) why startups used it. So it was a community of highly productive people sharing their love of building new things. That's my memory of that time period.

I'm not missing your point, but I don't see where it constitutes the counterargument that context and framing suggest you mean it to be.

What you're describing here is your perspective from within the small and insular group busily developing and advocating new technology, always focused on the next new thing that was cool and interesting and succinct and powerful. What I'm describing is my perspective from well outside that pale. Both can be true at the same time.

Then maybe you shouldn’t generalize your one viewpoint to say that early Ruby/Rails was not a worthy community for professionals or of use to people who practice jointly valued skills like entrepreneurship.

It’s also odd to see your long rant of whimsical vs professional when some of the most well-known companies were built with that community of so-called non-professionals. We have a difference in opinion on what constitutes “professional”.

The entire point I'm making is that, however well that community may have fulfilled those roles for people embedded in the social context of its ingroup, it did a lousy-to-failing job of the same outside that circle.