I remember finding out about different, smaller frameworks to rails back in 2011, and finding bliss in something not as sluggish and cumbersome like rails. The

I remember finding out about different, smaller frameworks to rails back in 2011, and finding bliss in something not as sluggish and cumbersome like rails. The key thing for me was that using something else let me learn a lot about the request cycle while Rails seemed to try to abstract everything away. I became a better programmer by leaving Rails.