The biggest change to Ruby hasn't been the language or the interpreter itself -- and that's largely part of it's problem. The big change has been developers abandoning ship like rats in a storm. (for node.js as you did, or for PHP now that its speed issues and security woes fade into the past)
It remains one of the slowest interpreted languages despite repeated promises of improvements (in raw operation speed even DOS QBASIC from 1991 makes it look like a toy), it is in many ways too different from other languages to be practical in the long term,
... and realistically, if it wasn't for RAILS, Ruby would have remained stillborn with nobody giving a flying purple fish about it.
Right now given its increasingly dark future I probably wouldn't be looking back at it.
Do you know PHP? Despite claims by its detractors its really not going anywhere. It's losing share for certain, but not users...$status = (marketShare != numberOfPeopleUsingIt);
PHP is a bit like the parent language of both it and JavaScript : C. It's really not going away any time soon. The way things seem to be heading I'm not sure I can say the same for Ruby.
Just remember, "Flexible and friendly" doesn't necessarily mean good. See "false simplicity" where you can dumb something down to the point it can no longer reasonably accomplish the task.