Thanks, I'm really glad to hear a non-rubyist liked it. You put your finger on a really hard balancing act: the more Rails and Ruby specific it is, the more I can offer really practical steps for how to improve the Rails apps I spend all day in. But the more I talk about the general stuff, the more anyone can see that there's general principles at work that are useful in understanding and improving the design that are more useful than a list of gems to use.