If programming is just my hobby, then maybe. But would you, for example, quit your current job and look for another, just to change the programming language? I know I'm not that sort of person.
I think it's not as much "if this guy becomes the lead I'm immediately quitting my Ruby job to return to PHP" as much as "if this guy becomes the lead I'm probably going to return to PHP for my next job."
I have my doubts, even for this softer version. These are things where one might feel very strongly in a moment, or even for a longer time, but facing a real life decision, there are so many other factors.
Of course we will never know the outcome of this, it's just my two cents.
Commendable action! If feel like it's a different case though. Two points:
1. Working for someone, even through a large company, is a much more directly supportive relationship, than using someone's free project. Especially since the project has a lot of large contributors.
2. A company is interchangeable, a skill is much less so. You can do the same, or very similar thing at the next company, but moving to a different language involves a lot of learning, even though both are programming languages.
For these reasons, if talking about a lot of people, I can see many of them leaving a problematic company, and only some of them changing their primary language. I'm sure there's someone out there throwing away two decades of experience for an ideal, but I don't think it's realistic, especially not for 1 problematic blog entry.
