From the perspective of the "average" professional programmer with a CS degree the vast majority of all programmers, even those who get paid to do it, are rank and utter beginners. Most programmers cannot solve fizzbuzz. Most programmers don't grok recursion, and have trouble with iteration from time to time. If you were to look at a graph of # of programmers within different skill level bins the "beginner" bin would outweigh all the others by a significant margin.
That's why you can replace PHP with RoR, you need to replace PHP with something that out PHP's PHP, but is based on sounder principles so that in the important cases where a beginner is climbing up the skill ladder or a system originally created in a "beginner language" grows or becomes sufficiently advanced they won't hit a brick wall where they need to migrate to an entirely different technology in order to progress.
Well said. Your second paragraph expands well on what I was thinking when I said we forget that beginners have a different idea of what 'trivial' means. The MVC concept (for example) might be trivial to those who get it, but it's likely seen as undesired friction by the beginner, while simultaneously being a good next step for them to acclimatise to should they be wishing to progress. Something that better facilitates this - or things like it - than what we currently have would be great.
That's why you can replace PHP with RoR, you need to replace PHP with something that out PHP's PHP, but is based on sounder principles so that in the important cases where a beginner is climbing up the skill ladder or a system originally created in a "beginner language" grows or becomes sufficiently advanced they won't hit a brick wall where they need to migrate to an entirely different technology in order to progress.