So I take it that you agree with me on the brokenness of web development, even if you consider that setting things up is not all that bad? I completely agree t

So I take it that you agree with me on the brokenness of web development, even if you consider that setting things up is not all that bad? I completely agree that web development is a mess. I just don't think that the first major problem described in your rant (choosing a programming language, web server, database, server-side framework, and client-side framework) is actually a major problem these days: Just pick any modern stack, and use the defaults. And please tell me if I missed something, but last time I checked, RoR + Heroku really didn't solve much of the glue nightmare. Rails provides excellent glue between the database and server-side code, at least if you like the sort of APIs provided by ActiveModel. (I do, some people don't.) Rails provides less glue between the server-side code and the client-side code, at least out of the box. Basically, it pre-configures Prototype, and makes it easy to do basic AJAX stuff via view helpers and unobtrusive JavaScript. If you prefer jQuery, you can switch over in about 30 seconds using jquery-rails. Rails does not provide a default client-side toolkit for highly interactive JavaScript applications, such as those typically built using Backbone.js or SproutCore.