Not having even played with Rails since the 1.x days, I find this all very interesting. I have been using Django for a while now, and what you describe here is

Not having even played with Rails since the 1.x days, I find this all very interesting. I have been using Django for a while now, and what you describe here is exactly what impressed me about Django. If I didn't like something in the core, it was trivial to switch it out. I tried 4 different templating engines within a two week period, and that was when I was a Django newbie. I think the author of this article needs to get out a bit and look around at the rest of the web framework world. Rails building on existing components is Not A Bad Thing, because it means that Rails has taken a decided turn away from being a monolithic framework toward being a set of well-formed but loosely coupled components. Light as a feather, stings like a bee, baby. Looks like I'll be playing with Rails 3 in the near future.