One of my most popular blog posts (by a long shot) ended with the words "is dying" http://jmoses.co/2013/12/21/is-ruby-dying.html. I love figuring out ways to get people to click on my articles.

With that said, we also do a read only branch called stable that we only push to once unstable gets the OK in Jenkins. I would not say that it is dead, but just an extra safe guard. I do appreciate that book recommendation on http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321601912/ I have not heard of that before.