boboroshi
Yes, it would balance out eventually in 5-6 years, but this would be painful for the near future and require a change up in what we're capable of doing, since so much more "revenue" is going to tax payments.
Vendors need to be rated and penalized for this kind of bait and switch, but unfortunately there is no downside to low ball the bid, and they often win and continue to win contracts.
I'm a broad-based Senior IC UX/Visual Designer, Mid-level Rails dev, and long term brand/marcom designer. I've build cross functional design/dev teams (InPhonic, LivingSocial) and can work between design, product, and engineering comfortably.
Co-Authored "The Rails View" for Pragmatic Programmers, and have spoken widely in the Rails and JS/React spaces on UX for Developers, Pattern Languages, Design Systems, and Product Development concepts.
Immediate availability (31 Aug 2022) due to a restructuring.
I've seen great ruby/rails code and I've seen abysmal ruby/rails code. A lot comes down to who wrote it and if they ever refactored the smelly parts.
After 20+ years, I often see that no one likes to refactor the smelly stuff until they're forced to, and we often end up working with a cool racketball of code covered in 2' of duct tape patches.
Go is the new hotness, as was Rails at one point, and in the near future it will be something else. There's a strong neophillic bent to most developers. It's a lot more fun to work in something that's new and evolving and solving crazy problems than something that is stable.
These are all tools in the tool kit. Use what lets you ship.
There's also some issues with Ruby 2.0 support in it and in Compass itself, if memory serves...
Bootstrap, etc are simply tools used to implement interfaces. They are not magic bullets. Design, like programming, takes time. It's not about gradients or drop shadows, but those are tools used in design.
It's often an iterative and collaborative process. It is not, however, "Agile". You can't design the interaction for a piece without looking at the whole.
Find someone who cares about interface, interaction, and usability. Ideally they can do graphics, html, and css. Ideally they've done some user testing before or are just really good at getting users. If you find someone like that, be prepared to pay. The good ones are few and far between and all that I know are gainfully employed or have hourly rates exceeding $200USD/hr.
If you want to learn more about this, there's a library of stuff out there. But just reading a bunch of books won't suddenly make your UIs prettier. But if you implement what you learn, it may improve their functionality. And that's far more important.