This is a huge problem, and it's even worse because of the great point Klabnick makes about the vocal maybe-minority. When somebody says "nobody actually does it that way", they may mean that nobody who writes blog posts actually does it that way. It's very difficult to tell the difference between things nobody is doing and things nobody is bothering to talk about doing.
Exactly.
Personally, I find the default Rails stack is completely fine for everything I need. I'd not even heard of half of these options in the "alternative stacks" in TFA and the comments here until today. OK, I'd heard of HAML and the other unit testing frameworks, but that's it.
I don't think there's really a big issue here. People could just as easily get distracted by all the different npms in node.js, or the different technologies in the enterprise Java world.
My point is that it doesn't matter much which stack you pick. The default stack is not failing. The fail is being overwhelmed by choice, when it doesn't matter in the beginning. What matters most is having a good teacher, who choses a stack for you to learn with.
Once you develop your own taste, then you can refine the specifics. But don't get stuck with analysis paralysis in the beginning.
That's supposed to be what Rails itself IS, right? Isn't that the point of it being "opinionated", it's supposed to BE the curated stack from someone you trust.
If it's failing, that's a problem.
It certainly is frustrating when you're trying to get the actual Rails stack to work and can't figure out why it seems so hard and someone tells you "Oh yeah, despite the Rails documentation telling you to do it that way, nobody actually does it that way."