That just proves you live in a bubble :) I never got into RoR because it sucked so much on windows and every single tutorial was OSX focused. I just sticked to alternatives that worked.

So which companies are actually doing RoR development on Windows? Do they also deploy to Windows Server (?) in production? I guess I live in multiple bubbles because I’ve worked for tech companies in several different major metros and I’ve never heard of this as a mainstream thing.

It is not like that. My point is that there's a barrier to entry to RoR that you should own a Mac. I gave up because my home setup is Windows based and I won't change it for the sake of a hyped framework or tool.

But none of this is surprising considering where RoR is coming from, I'm not sad or upset about it either :)

You don't need a Mac. RoR works perfect on Linux as well.

it seems like you’re blaming RoR for a problem that is actually due to windows being “different”. almost every OS besides windows is a nix or nix clone and POSIX compliant or certified. so who’s really the problem here?

In the early days of rails say 2006, it was definitely more common place... but I guess there were fewer of us back then ... I know as a maintainer of curb I have a few windows users

I started with a ruby/rails project in 2007 and after 3 days of fighting my work issued windows machine I just went out and bought a white macbook and things were up in running in an hour or two. I've never looked back.