> Early adopters generally tend to do well, whatever the language may be.
One look at the Rails early adopters should tell you that this is false. Almost every major high-throughput architecture that was initially based on Rails had to completely reimplemented.
Rails is appropriate for proving ideas and rapid development of complete apps. It's also suitable for implementing small, loosely-coupled SOA-style apps integrated with a larger system, or for basic low-traffic apps.
It's not appropriate for huge commerce or infrastructure-style services.
A lot of developers jumped on it when it was a new technology because it offered lots of benefits - in particular, the whole convention-over-configuration thing and lots of happy developers. They weren't wrong for that. Now that we're trying to build bigger and bigger things on the web, and moving into SOA with APIs for mobile apps etc., something other than Rails is a good choice.
Those early adopters did well, and modern early adopters will do well too.
I don't think OP meant "do well" as in "code or architect" well, but they "do well for themselves" (make more money, play with newer toys, don't have to clean up others' messes as much, etc).
One look at the Rails early adopters should tell you that this is false. Almost every major high-throughput architecture that was initially based on Rails had to completely reimplemented.