Regarding your first point: but you weren't a beginner anymore when you discovered Rails. You knew before how to control a raw DB without an ORM, you understood

Regarding your first point: but you weren't a beginner anymore when you discovered Rails. You knew before how to control a raw DB without an ORM, you understood the basic structure or components of a webapp. And I still believe that those abstractions are also for a pro too heavy, hiding too much away, making web apps unnecessary complex. "First, in rails you can start quickly and not use an ORM or coffee." But a beginner can't and even for advanced people I wouldn't call the rampup time for a Rails app "quickly" anymore, those times are gone for a long time. "I used sinatra I eventually wished I had just used rails" Maybe you should give Express/Node a try -- the ecosystem paired with Node's modularity makes me much faster than with Rails and maybe you realize how slow you have been Rails, before.