"Let's not pretend these people don't exist just because you aren't one of them."
I assure you that I am one of them. I'm probably one of the people whose questions you helped answer on a discussion forum.
The part where I am, as you said, painting everyone's experience with my own is comparing Rails to a Java based web programming stack. Someone coming from PHP, for instance, might find it kind of difficult to use a framework that (essentially) can't be used without some knowledge of OOP, MVC, and so forth (as opposed to just putting some things up on a page). Sure, there's a learning curve.
But the "immobilization" you mentioned happens in degrees. Yes, it always takes some work to get up in running, because programming isn't easy. However, I don't think that the range of choices immobilizes a new programmer in Rails to anywhere near the degree that it does in the Java world.
So while I would agree that I have a particular angle that isn't necessarily shared by everyone struggling with rails, I don't think that my experiences are unusual for a programmer with experience in Java who has gone through the learning curve on web app development in Java and Rails.
I assure you that I am one of them. I'm probably one of the people whose questions you helped answer on a discussion forum.
The part where I am, as you said, painting everyone's experience with my own is comparing Rails to a Java based web programming stack. Someone coming from PHP, for instance, might find it kind of difficult to use a framework that (essentially) can't be used without some knowledge of OOP, MVC, and so forth (as opposed to just putting some things up on a page). Sure, there's a learning curve.
But the "immobilization" you mentioned happens in degrees. Yes, it always takes some work to get up in running, because programming isn't easy. However, I don't think that the range of choices immobilizes a new programmer in Rails to anywhere near the degree that it does in the Java world.
So while I would agree that I have a particular angle that isn't necessarily shared by everyone struggling with rails, I don't think that my experiences are unusual for a programmer with experience in Java who has gone through the learning curve on web app development in Java and Rails.