There are a number of perverse incentives going on here:<p>- Rails needs something opinionated and &quot;new&quot; every so often to remain relevant.<p>- Workers, consultants, etc., benefit from being familiar with the latest rails, so many projects are upgraded that don&#x27;t need to be.<p>- New versions break lots of gems and useful online tutorials, increasing the value of experience relative to aptitude.<p>So now, across the world, lots of teams will remove perfectly good code and divert lots of attention to upgrading to Rails 5 for no apparent reason or simply that a higher number is viewed as better.<p>Contrast this with the node ecosystem where libraries tend to be smaller and significant version bumps typically take an hour or so to accommodate at most.<p>The worst part is that if you engineered an alternative to action cable (for example) into your app, Rails 5 makes your approach seem outdated for no reason.