All of this "Rails makes you do X; or, well, you can do Y" is conflating Rails as a framework with Rails' ActiveRecord library, which is the default ORM. Since

All of this "Rails makes you do X; or, well, you can do Y" is conflating Rails as a framework with Rails' ActiveRecord library, which is the default ORM. Since Rails 3, you can easily, and effectively transparently, use DataMapper instead, which is a general ORM that supports whatever pattern you wish, not simply the ActiveRecord pattern. Mind you, prior to Rails 3 this was a heinous world of pain, so it's understandable to overlook it.