> Every time I hear someone complain about Rails, I ask myself if this person is really just complaining about how complex web dev is. I've never seen a compla

> Every time I hear someone complain about Rails, I ask myself if this person is really just complaining about how complex web dev is. I've never seen a complaint that passed this smell test. Yes, Rails abstracts over a veritable shit-ton of complicated domains. I call this "magic" and I dislike it very much. I'm a very explicit person. I like the ability to jump into any project, regardless of language, and be able to figure out how it works. This is typically possible with Python, Node and PHP with most web frameworks. Ruby with Rails? Not at all and for precisely this reason. I'm fine with abstracting things but only to a degree. If you're doing a laundry list of complex things with a single statement, and I'm referring to web server specific stuff not ASM instructions, then your framework is going to require more ramp-up time than any other explicit one.