I wouldn't call Ruby a high performance language, but your experience seems weird. Even four or five years ago I would consider Ruby one of the most painless languages for dealing with upgrades and new versions of things: install ruby with a version management tool, install your app from gemfile, run your tests, good to go. I regard it at one of the first languages to have effective tools for dealing with versioning and upgrades. I still find it easier to deal with than Python by a solid amount.