All three of the above communities (PHP, Ruby, and FnProg) are diverse enough that a PHP meetup in location A could be culturally similar to an FnProg meetup in location B, and so on.
Re:Taking PHP Seriously
by vancouverwill on Monday October 17, 2016 @07:37AM
(#12724137)
you could definitely argue that a company using PHP nowadays would find it harder to find good engineers because the best ones who care about quality, performance etc don't want to work on a PHP app
You can go to any Ruby meetup and you will see it's different than PHP meetup which both are quite different from Functional Programming meetups.
Thus I would say that it's not about the technology but about people whom you attract (i.e. culture).
I skip luck & timing, these are mostly random and one has very little power to influence them.