The answer is really quite simple: Rails' existence has cracked the door for corporate acceptance of Ruby as a development platform. It's not wide open but it is enough for me to jam my foot in there and get a chance to present alternatives to Java, PHP, Perl, etc., when bidding for a job. I'm not saying that Ruby is better than the others in all circumstances but for what we often do Ruby can be cheaper, faster and more enjoyable.

We made a hard (as in rapid, sudden) switch 5 years ago from primarily developing in Perl to primarily developing in Ruby. It felt like a huge gamble to me because there were very few libraries (as compared to Perl) and no reasonable application framework to speak of. We would constantly run into problems with libraries having bugs and the supposed "maintainer" seemingly vanishing from the face of the earth. With the large Rails wave there is more interest in maintaining and actively developing libraries for Ruby which means we develop fewer on our own.

Many Railers have taken the time to provide screencasts which demonstrate how fast (*very* fast) one can develop applications. These can be used to prompt decision-makers to at least give Ruby a fair shake. And it helps lure additional developers which can only be good for the Ruby community.

There's much more to it but for at least these reasons I say, "Thank You!" to 37 Signals and the entire RoR community for helping ruby along.