Also it's worth noting that the core ruby language moves quite slowly. It's just Rails and the gem ecosystem that moves a maddening pace.

It moves pretty quick in comparison to other languages though, and I rather think the versioning system is a bit weird as 1.9 broke backwards comparability enough that quite a few ruby libraries and programs are still only functional on 1.8 without editing source

7 years between point releases?

Exactly. The Ruby community likes to experiment and it's a bit hyperactive. Personally I quite like it because of that.

That said the article was a bit of a stretch both in the example it used, and in particular the fact that the Ruby world is currently undergoing a big shift. I would imagine one year from now a lot of those choices will be gone (e.g. Ruby 1.9.1 or even 1.8.x, Rails 2.x and maybe some of the less popular Ruby implementations).

But the general principle is correct: the Ruby community likes to try, change, play with new frameworks and ideas. If you hate the principle, then maybe Ruby is not for you. Or maybe in true Open source philosophy, you can make a simpler installer, or get someone else to do it. Then you'd have made the Ruby world a better place, and we'd all thank you for it. :)