Sorry, I didn't want to imply that ActionView gets in my way - I just don't miss it. Padrino uses the excellent Tilt templating library and it loads pretty much

Sorry, I didn't want to imply that ActionView gets in my way - I just don't miss it. Padrino uses the excellent Tilt templating library and it loads pretty much all template engines I could wish for and it does add explicit partial support to sinatra. That's about all I could want from ActionView. I don't like or use form-builders for instance, I prefer not to use the js/ajax-helpers etc. I guess it boils down to a matter of preference: I prefer my stack to be built from the ground up on a solid foundation by adding pieces I want and need in my app - and that's what I can do with padrino. If I'm writing a pure API it's sinatra plus the padrino router, tilt, maybe an orm and that's about it. If I need something more comprehensive I can add components on top of that that add the required functionality (render-helpers such as partials etc.)