from the ruby side of things, here's a very good write-up of the differing philosophies between rails [monolithic, batteries-included] and sinatra [small, light

from the ruby side of things, here's a very good write-up of the differing philosophies between rails [monolithic, batteries-included] and sinatra [small, lightweight]: http://rubysource.com/rails-or-sinatra-the-best-of-both-worlds/ http://rubysource.com/rails-or-sinatra-the-best-of-both-worl... the post goes into why there is room (and a need) for both in the ruby web ecosystem, and where you'd want to use each one.