alt Hacker NewsRails tries to more tightly integrate with the front-end which causes a lot of turn over the years. Django projects from 10 years ago are still upgradable in a day or two. Rails does include some nice stuff though, but I much prefer Django's code first database models than Rail's ActiveRecord.
I do agree that Rails' asset stuff has been giant pain over the years and has not kept up well. On the other hand, some apps that adopted separate Rails APIs and a separate (for example, React) frontend have been fine. You're right though that their opinion here added more headaches that necessary!