the best reason i remember was that it wasn't unanimous. my submission had to go through several people, and while the guys who i had direct contact with showed that they liked me, the decision came after their meeting with the CTO.

They also knew before hand and gave me a chance perhaps i would do something very impressive. i'm not saying my submission was perfect, i might have done a couple of things wrong, or during that period they might have found someone better, there might have been several reasons i think, but i still learned a ton about Rails.