I've been working with Ruby professionally for something like 10 years and all of those points are generally just things you learn to work around. And Rails it

I've been working with Ruby professionally for something like 10 years and all of those points are generally just things you learn to work around. And Rails itself is less monolithic than you think. You can swap out most of the components for other gems, like ActiveRecord vs. DataMapper (though I am not aware of anyone who does this anymore and the level of support for Rails gems generally outclasses everyone else) or remove those components entirely. Much of the "Rails magic" is inside ActiveSupport, which you can import without bringing in all of Rails proper. Personally I think much of the stuff in ActiveSupport should go core.