Yes I needed 1.9.3 for this silly software. And I had a little special setup so rvm failed to compile. I'm also very overwhelmed by rvm,gem,bundler etc... Python has pip,easy_install(old) and virualenv. Which are just easier to understand for me. Ruby is too much magic and is trying to do everything automatically (IMO).

As a developer that primarily works on ruby, I can see it if he wanted 1.9.3. Most of the references you'll find on that tell you to use @environment_wrapper_of_the_month, and those are deep rabbit holes for people who know nothing about the language.

rbenv is a great way to get whatever version of ruby you want up and going fast. Install a couple dependencies, clone the git repo, and run the install.sh. I went from never using it to running on CentOS 6 in a half hour.