I absolutely agree. But I'd like to add that if you use a more rapid development platform than Java (be it Rails, Django or whatever) you have more time to polish it, iron out the kinks, put a little bit extra effort into the user interfaces, and so forth.
Add to that Rails' integration with Prototype+Scriptaculous JS-libraries, enabling you to make easy-to-use drag-and-drop interfaces and so forth. At least for me, those things being easy to do, I tend to build better user interfaces than if I had to put it all together on my own. Simply because it takes less time and effort.
So, it is entirely possible that the Rails apps are more user friendly than the Java apps. I'm not saying this is the whole story, I just wanted to add that to the points you put forth, with which I completely agree.
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I absolutely agree. But I'd like to add that if you use a more rapid development platform than Java (be it Rails, Django or whatever) you have more time to polish it, iron out the kinks, put a little bit extra effort into the user interfaces, and so forth.
Add to that Rails' integration with Prototype+Scriptaculous JS-libraries, enabling you to make easy-to-use drag-and-drop interfaces and so forth. At least for me, those things being easy to do, I tend to build better user interfaces than if I had to put it all together on my own. Simply because it takes less time and effort.
So, it is entirely possible that the Rails apps are more user friendly than the Java apps. I'm not saying this is the whole story, I just wanted to add that to the points you put forth, with which I completely agree.