"noise from complete beginners offering each other tidbits of programming wisdom"<p>This is a problem that plagues any language with both age and an active online community.<p>ActionScript has been around for a decade and massive communities have been built around it with the users dominated by people who are inexperienced, learning, and overly-confident about their abilities.  The same can be found for HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Java, C#, etc.<p>If RoR remains relevant and used for long enough by enough people, it too will enjoy the same fate.