Have you used Refinery? I have and wouldn't base an app on it, or even use it again for a CMS - frankly you could build the same admin features better in Rails in a couple of days, and tailor them properly to your application. Refinery is not a good model of a rails app and is probably the main reason for his problems or perception that Rails is heavy - it was a mistake to try to base an app on it and most of his gripes seem centered on that - there's a lesson there and it's not about Rails.
Rails has become lighter with 3.x and will become lighter still with 4.x - they're dropping a lot of unnecessary stuff and trying to pare it down to the minimum - an admirable direction and quite the opposite to Java, which makes this article all the more baffling. Of course it's not the perfect framework and there are plenty of options, but the complaints of the article are histrionics.
The laundry list of possible technologies in the article is absurd - RefineryCMS, Devise, Omniauth, Carrierwave, Unicorn, Rack Rewrite, Fog, New Relic, Foreman, AMQP, and Honeybadger, Heroku.
You can get started with rails on a cheap VPS and serve your first few hundred thousand users with the following very simple stack: Apache, Ruby, Passenger, Rails. Setup is a few lines in your package manager of choice, writing the app is straightforward and requires none of the software above, maintenance is running aptitude update and bundle update now and then.
Out of the stack above, Devise is quite a nice authentication solution and is the only one I'd recommend, but it's easy to roll your own, as to the rest of his list, if you don't need it, don't bother using it, none of it is required.
"An admirable direction and quite the opposite of Java." What are you talking, specifics please? Is Java a framework with features comparable to Rails?
Why is the laundry list of technologies absurd, these are the technologies that I run a business on. I think what's absurd is the level of reaction in your comment. Rails people now have this defensive reaction, and I've noticed it in person as well.
It reminds me of the reaction of Java zealots in 2007. It really does. "Oh, really, you couldn't be serious, I mean it's absurd to think that Ruby...." It wasn't absurd to challenge, and neither is this challenge.
Firstly, apologies for the harsh tone and references in the 3rd person as I see from your other comments that you are the author of the article.
"An admirable direction and quite the opposite of Java." What are you talking, specifics please? Is Java a framework with features comparable to Rails?
I admit this was sloppy wording, however your article is called 'Rails, You Have Turned into Java.' :) I was comparing Rails 4 (removes lots of features/bloat), with Java Frameworks which do not have a reputation for slimming down... Of course I'm sure there are some minimal Java web frameworks out there too (sorry not familiar with many). Your article is somewhat provocative and not representative of the experience of many with Rails so I wouldn't be surprised if you encounter a defensive reaction to this sort of sentiment. That's to be expected, as was the reaction of those using Java frameworks to DHH's blowhard rhetoric when he started out with Rails.
Why is the laundry list of technologies absurd, these are the technologies that I run a business on.
They're absurd as a criticism of Rails because many of them are completely external to Rails, not required to run a website/app, and some of them are not the right choices IMHO. Rails does not require any of these components to run websites even at scale. Sure some of them might be useful, but none are essential or intrinsic to Rails.
Forgive me but I think the choice of RefineryCMS was a mistake, and if you back out of that mistake, you'd find Rails a lot more forgiving, a lot lighter, and a lot more suited to what you want to do if you're writing a large webapp with lots of components (or several interacting webapps). Problems with engines, subapps, conflicting routes etc are all based on this, and simply don't occur in most Rails apps. I've used it as a CMS for some clients and regret having done so in retrospect - it's not terrible standalone (also not great) but I can see how integrating it with an app would be a nightmare. You don't need to use meta-frameworks built on Rails to build an app, in fact I'd say it's a mistake, use a few discrete gems like devise, and just build what you want.
Rails has become lighter with 3.x and will become lighter still with 4.x - they're dropping a lot of unnecessary stuff and trying to pare it down to the minimum - an admirable direction and quite the opposite to Java, which makes this article all the more baffling. Of course it's not the perfect framework and there are plenty of options, but the complaints of the article are histrionics.
The laundry list of possible technologies in the article is absurd - RefineryCMS, Devise, Omniauth, Carrierwave, Unicorn, Rack Rewrite, Fog, New Relic, Foreman, AMQP, and Honeybadger, Heroku.
You can get started with rails on a cheap VPS and serve your first few hundred thousand users with the following very simple stack: Apache, Ruby, Passenger, Rails. Setup is a few lines in your package manager of choice, writing the app is straightforward and requires none of the software above, maintenance is running aptitude update and bundle update now and then.
Out of the stack above, Devise is quite a nice authentication solution and is the only one I'd recommend, but it's easy to roll your own, as to the rest of his list, if you don't need it, don't bother using it, none of it is required.