ASP.net MVC is maybe quite similar to Rails (it actually is 'inspired by it' i.e. a rip off).
But the difference between .NET and Ruby is that Ruby has a culture of hackers, and most of the innovative things re web dev are born in Ruby e.g. Haml, Capistrano etc,and then get ported to other langs
e.g. {
:Haml => 'PHaml',
:Rails => ['many PHP frameworks', 'ASP.net MVC'],
:Capistrano => 'Fabric'
}
As a long time .NET developer converted to Ruby and Node.js, you hit the nail on the head. The innovators and creative types are on the open source side.
That is not to say I have not worked with talented .NET developers but for the most part the culture of .NET developers is to find a corporate job and wallow in an enterprise process. Don't do anything outside of Visual Studio and heaven forbid use anything not built by MS.
The same can be said about Java which needs to be redefined in the dictionary as THE language of over-engineering.
