> I think most people would agree that the benefits of Smalltalk the language are inextricable from the runtime environment and GUI.
Most, not all:
https://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/manual/html_node/Over...
Although it looks like somewhere along the path with the "new" graphical browser they dropped the tag line "Smalltalk for those who can type".
Rails is a monster, and historically pretty poor ruby code quality INMHO. That said, ruby does indeed miss an "image" concept, but is quite dynamic and object oriented. Some smalltalk patterns would work well with ruby, I think.
There's also (the abandoned?) maglev ruby on top of gemstone/s object db for smalltalk.