I think we are talking about different things here.

I'm well aware that 99% of companies could get by with any old web framework. Should they, though? Of course not. Since we're talking about rails, let's use that example. It's an extremely productive, flexible, capable rapid application environment. And yes, it's not a speed demon, especially when used naively, no-one denies that. So why do companies choose it?

It's not because they're stupid or inexperienced. It's because the tradeoffs of higher productivity are worth the penalty in execution speed. Slightly higher server costs are worth the massive boost in productivity compared to other options. Why do you think it's so popular? If you're going to reply "because people are cargo cult following lemmings", you are simply wrong. The tradeoffs make sense to them, that's why.

So you're a sysadmin. Linux uses python all over the place. Why is that? They could have used any old language. But they chose python, even though it's slower than C, because the tradeoffs - easy to read, write, maintain - are worth it.

VFX could not be a more different environment than rapid web application development. As you say, 1% improvement means big bucks. You know what 1% improvement gets you on the web? Diddly shit. And every few percent raw speed increase on the web, as you drop down into the less dynamic frameworks, costs you massively in dev time, maintainability, hireability. It is a balance people strike. If I could increase my team's productivity 10% at the cost of doubling our server expenses I would take that deal instantly.

I can't speak to the fads you mention, except I also generally disdain them. But progress does happen. Which is why the web sites for the films you help make are probably not just written in any old web framework, they're probably written in rails or node or what have you, because the tradeoffs are worth it.

Remember what site you're on. This is about startups, small companies trying to grow fast. It's not about hyper-optimised rendering farms. Different worlds, dude!

Anyway, I think you actually agree with me, and I with you, if we just step into each other's shoes for a second.

Although I don't know what's so hard about making a couple of animated videos. 99% of the time you can just use any old rendering framework. I mean you just ask for a frame, it generates it, and saves it to disk right? Dude, I could do that with povray in 1995 on a 386. Whyever would you need 16 thousand computers for that? And 5PB of RAID? I can store a whole movie in like 3GB and that's 1080P! Actually my imac can make pretty realistic graphics in games, maybe you should buy one of them? Shit's easy right? : P