Of course, the project is now very successful and is used to build all kinds of Web applications (http://rubyonrails.org/applications). What are the key things you think made Rails so successful?

I think the fundamental thing that set Rails apart was a culture of putting the programmer first. The idea that Web programming should be fun and that programmers should be enjoying themselves.

The culture bred ideas like Convention over Configuration, where we standardized all the things that programmers do most of the time for most applications anyway.

It also helped that we took marketing seriously. That we cared about enlightening people about what we had. Everything from the first 15-minute screencast to the RailsConf conferences and more.

Speaking of languages, tell us a little about why you like Ruby. Do you look at other languages and think "it would be nice to have such features" or "things can be done easier with this"?

Ruby has a lot of specific features that makes it a joy to work with. There are blocks, open classes, and so much more. But any one feature would fail to capture the essence of how they all work in concert to produce a truly delightful experience for the programmer.

Ruby can also produce the most beautiful code I've ever seen in any programming language. The sense of aesthetics is very high.

Nowadays, most popular programming languages have associated Web application frameworks like Spring, Django and CakePHP. Do you think Rails made frameworks popular for "mainstream" app development? Did Rails fundamentally change the way developers think about Web apps?

I think Rails certainly helped kick-start the interest in frameworks, especially for PHP programmers. And it certainly lit a fire under the idea of full-stack frameworks where everything is included in the box.

But that was probably more a factor of being at the right place at the right time. I find it hard to believe that we wouldn't have moved in this obvious direction eventually anyway.

What do you think the future of Web app frameworks is generally? Will they become a "standard" that developers just get used to working with? And how can they help developers be more productive?

I hope they don't become standards! At least not in any official sense of the word. Frameworks should always be competing on their merits.

I do think that the bulk of all Web development will move to use frameworks, if you can't say that has happened already.