Nothing is discouraging me. I've been using Ruby 1.9.1 for everything I do for close to a year now and had few problems. My major gems require 1.9 for various reasons (easy UTF-8, fibers, etc.) and I've felt no qualms about it. For some other trivial gems I might make a token effort to keep them 1.8 compatible, which mostly just means not using the cleaner new hash syntax.
1.9 is the current Ruby. I can see needing to keep the old Ruby around for legacy code that isn't worth updating, or having a preference for an alternative Ruby (JRuby, Rubinius, etc.) -- but it truly baffles me why so many people are still starting new projects in the slower, obsolete Ruby 1.8.x line.
