The firm has also benefited from its use of Ruby on Rails. A good way to understand the value of Ruby on Rails is to think of it as something like Lego blocks of code -- discrete pieces of programming bits that can be put together in ingenious ways to create Web programs easily. Most Web applications, even ones radically different from each other, need to do a basic set of tasks to accomplish anything. For instance, every Web program needs to have a way of getting input from the page a user is looking at, and of doing something interesting with that input (say, adding it to a database). Ruby on Rails has all of these functions built into it; in order to build basic steps, says Hansson, programmers just need to use prefab parts already built in, not spend their time writing rudimentary code.

There's another advantage to programming with Ruby on Rails: It makes AJAX easy to use. AJAX is an intriguing -- if much-hyped -- programming method that makes Web pages work more like desktop programs. On most Web sites, pressing a link or a button is a two- or three-second affair -- every time you press something, you've got to wait for the entire page to reload before you can do anything else. With AJAX, pressing a button causes an action to occur on the page more-or-less immediately, without having to reload. The name, which was coined by Jesse James Garrett, a designer at the San Francisco Web design firm Adaptive Path, is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML; it essentially describes a way for a Web page to talk to a Web server in the background, without having to inconvenience the user in the process. AJAX is the magic in slick-looking applications like Google Maps, in which a map of the world can be moved with the click of a mouse. In older mapping programs, such as Yahoo's, you'd have to wait for a page to reload each time you wanted to look at another part of the map.

These two features -- the reusability of its code, and built-in Ajax -- have helped to make Ruby on Rails increasingly popular among Web developers. Robot Co-op, a small Seattle company behind the popular sites 43 Things and 43 Places, developed its sites in Ruby on Rails. So did Odeo, the new podcasting company founded by Noah Glass and Evan Williams, one of the creators of Blogger.

"When I talk to developers about Ruby on Rails, they're like, 'This is the language I would have designed,'" says Jeff Veen, a pioneering Web programmer and one of the co-founders of Adaptive Path. Adaptive Path usually creates sites for other companies, but -- following something of the model 37 Signals used in producing Basecamp -- Veen has recently put together a small team of developers to create a Ruby on Rails application that the company plans to release to the outside world (the program, a tool to help bloggers measure traffic and other stats on their site, will be out by the end of the year, Veen says). Several other developers also attest that Ruby on Rails makes programming Web apps so easy that good ideas for Web programs are now within reach. "I've had some ideas for applications running around in my head for a while now," says Rael Dornfest, chief technology officer of the tech book publishing firm O'Reilly. "Until now, they would have been prohibitively difficult to create in terms of time and structure. What Ruby on Rails has allowed me to do is express ideas in code more easily than it would have been without the framework."

Expressing ideas in code is an apt description for what many new Web developers seem to be doing these days. What stands out about 37 Signals -- as well as Adaptive Path, Odeo, the Robot Co-op, and a host of other successful Web firms -- is the passion it has for new ideas. These people, you get the sense, truly understand the flexibility of the Web and are delighted by the power they possess to make it better.

Of course, they're not looking to do it for free. But there's no expectation of riches, either -- or, more interestingly, there's a sense that riches can actually damage the quality of the software. "The big point is personal satisfaction and enjoyment," says Josh Petersen, one of the founders of Robot Co-op (which has received investment money from Amazon.com). "I've worked at big companies and big development teams and I don't find it enjoyable. Now, one of my greatest joys is sitting at the same table with everyone else here, and getting to use an Apple computer at work."

Every day, it seems, you hear stories about how Americans will have an increasingly difficult time competing in the global marketplace. Talking to someone like Fried -- or Petersen, or other new Web entrepreneurs -- prompts optimism. The Web is 10 years old. It's basically untouched. With so many people now free to build their good ideas onto it, is it any wonder Kevin Kelly thinks they'll remember us fondly in 3,000 years?

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