The author may not have as much experience on a large web project as using something like RoR would help with, but even so I generally agree with him. Specific

The author may not have as much experience on a large web project as using something like RoR would help with, but even so I generally agree with him. Specifically speaking, what made me a better programmer was making my own game engines from scratch using DirectX, SDL, and OpenGL. Yup, I wrote 3 different engines on three different technologies (even though SDL uses DirectDraw underneath). What made me a better web developer was writing my own MVC framework for PHP, and then I moved to Rails to be productive. Hiding those details helps certainly, but only if you know them. You still need to know them, which is where a lot of Rails programmers get it wrong, but hiding it will still help you be productive.