I missed this when it first came out. Gartner sees Ruby as a mayor player for the next five years. Unfortunately, Gartner sells the content they're producing so normal people don't get to see it. I came across a german translation where the main points are

• 4 Million Ruby programmers by 2013


• Focus on Convention over Configuration gives impressive functionality to developers


• Rails-Framework is currently the killer app for ruby, other applications will follow


• Domain Specific Languages will be the strongest attractor for professional developers


• Tools will mature over the next year

There's a graph of it somewhere on the web:



Findings: The Ruby Language Will Reach 4 Million Programmers by 2013

Techworld - Ruby faces off against PHP, Java

Ruby Is on the Rise - Application Development