I think the SHIP FASTER PEON! thing has less to do with Ruby and more to do with the perception that Ruby is some magical tool with which you can rapidly build anything. I learned Ruby 100% on my own and never worked with anyone else who used it and I've found my approach to writing Ruby very similar to my approach to writing Clojure: decoupling by default, immutability by default (where possible), single use design for methods. It wasn't until recently that I learned that what I do naturally in programming has an entire school of thought behind it called SOLID design. I definitely agree that Clojure lends itself more to following SOLID design principles but I think that Ruby can as well.