Living outside of the Bay Area has consequences as well. For example, I'm an out-of-work developer currently living outside of SF, and I can therefore only really apply to positions that allow for remote work (which are much rarer than HN would have you believe).
To me, the most important distinction between a "junior" and a "senior" developer is that a senior developer isn't afraid to work with and maintain legacy code.
When I first started out, I was obsessed with only using the latest and greatest technologies, but I've come to realize over the course of my career that this is simply infeasible for many organizations.
To you. When I first started, I wasn't afraid of maintaining legacy code at all. It's an entirely different set of things that made me go from "junior" to "less junior".
I have to disagree with the last part of your post. Some languages are actually better in quantifiable ways; for example, shorter development time, better performance, etc.
But no language is best in every case. Putting skills into language agnostic pursuits means you can use whatever is objectively best as needed, ideally you'll have already used it.
Have you looked at http://www.chicagoboss.org? "Chicago Boss is the answer to slow server software: a Rails-like framework for Erlang that delivers web pages to your users as quickly and efficiently as possible."
I played with it and found it to be pretty Rails-like, even including several moments of "what foul sorcery is this?"
Generally, new stuff that is successful does not compete head-on, unless it's got some kind of "unfair advantage" like a big company behind it. In other words, it does something a bit better, but also differently. Rails was better organized and cleaner than PHP, but less bureaucratic than Java.
Chicago Boss can't compete with all the users and plugins and everything that Rails has, head on, so it's probably best used where it has an advantage on Rails: stuff like websockets where holding a lot of them open is a piece of cake for Erlang, but more of a resource hog for Rails (at least it used to be that way, has 4 improved things?).
Chicago Boss might fit the bill for you; I tried it and found it felt like it was trying to force a foreign model on Erlang a little too hard. I ended just putting something together myself with cowboy and other pieces like erlydtl, and ended up quite happy with it.
I was actually thinking that. Plenty of schools there including RIT and U of R, lots of office/warehouse/factory space available, unique local culture, cheap (for now) housing...
While I don't doubt the veracity of this article, it is wildly presumptuous to characterize an entire nation based on one or two isolated, anecdotal incidents.
How would we feel if the rest of the world characterized Americans by the antics of single individuals, like Lindsay Lohan or Miley Cyrus?
I lived in china for 2.5 years and american's are characterized by its celebrities. In the beginning, i spent most of my lunch time conversations explaining that... No i do not own a gun, but i also explained many times as the men told me they stopped drinking as they prepared to have children.... That is odd; most children in the US are conceived by parents that were drunk.
In the sense they are their role models (not only they, but pop culture celebrities in general)
People strive to be like them, rich and individualistic for their own pleasure (instead of being content, or wanting to be a bill gates in the sense of being good to other people beside himself)
The people I've met were usually highly materialistic, individualistic, consumerist, and willfully ignorant (ie: being seen as smart is bad, being seen as sexy but of average intelligence is good), and having a incredible sense of superiority and exceptionality.
Maybe I'm missing something. I don't see why the use of this service would produce an increase in that phenomenon beyond what it is now. I tend to think this would merely swap encrypted versions of commonly-used passwords for the originals.