While I feel sad too, I think the primary reason why it imploded under its own weight was the "magic".
I still love Ruby, for all its developer friendliness and the consistency of its idioms. But too much of that sugar leads to bloat, that requires a bunch of hair-pulling for newbies to grok.
Now of course, there exist other simpler frameworks (a la sinatra), but when your posterchild is a thing like Rails, you can't expect people to not be burnt in the long term and still come back.
Now of course, there exist other simpler frameworks (a la sinatra), but when your posterchild is a thing like Rails, you can't expect people to not be burnt in the long term and still come back.