Rails is not bloated, it just comes with a lot of features. I'd suggest watching these videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ex8EEv-WPs http://www.youtube.co

Rails is not bloated, it just comes with a lot of features. I'd suggest watching these videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ex8EEv-WPs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ex8EEv-WPs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUNdKVG2W-8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUNdKVG2W-8 A typical Rails instance will use 100 - 150mb, and does not take a minute to start up. Have you actually used Rails? I have several large projects and none have ever taken that long to startup. I use Ruby for non Rails projects all the time and had no issue finding how to include Active Record and Action Mailer into a Ruby CLI application.