I started learning Ruby for fun roughly 6 months before the first release of Rails. Although I rarely use Rails today (more because I rarely work on full-stack projects), it paved the way for a lot of the Ruby community today. That was a lucky coincidence, but I can draw a pretty direct line between Rails and me making a living off Ruby, running two conferences in the space and having met a lot of awesome people in the community.

Most people don't realize how ground-breaking Rails was back then. It basically went against the common assumption that long up-front setup is just part of the project. I seriously had people complaining that they couldn't bill as much on small projects if that became standard. The 15-minute blog might be a joke today, but back then, it was an awesome way of showing that Rails focused on making things quick to start (I don't like to say easy, it never was).

I am also surprised on how much of the general concepts from the 0.x versions survived. Sure, things have gotten bigger and parts got replaced, but the general structure is still the same.

Thanks for all the effort and love!