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So why does JRuby never got as much traction as other jvm langs like clojure, scala, groovy? I have heard good things about the ruby syntax, top that you get unparalleled powers of jvm like gc, cross platform, libs and much more!

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Clojure and Scala are pretty good ideas, being modified versions of two leading programming paradigms, i.e. Lisp and Haskell respectively. Groovy is the most JRuby-like of those choices, and probably has far more traction than JRuby because it uses Java syntax and is more heavily promoted.

For the same reason that alternative implementations of Python never got the kind of traction they deserve, because 90% of the gems, libraries and everything are specifically tailored to MRI and it's always harder to play catch up.

Also, the strong anti-Java culture in the Ruby community probably didn't help (even though JRuby has nothing to do with Java, or very little).

Nothing to do with Java? Really? How did you come to that conclusion?

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