Agreed. And the challenge with using Rails is that when you hit a problem for which ActiveRecord is not the right tool, you have to now discard your entire proc

Agreed. And the challenge with using Rails is that when you hit a problem for which ActiveRecord is not the right tool, you have to now discard your entire process because the whole of the Rails framework is assuming state manipulation via the ActiveRecord abstraction. "Rails" is an appropriate term for the framework; step too far off of it, and you find you're on rocky terrain.