It is a fantastic time to be a web developer and to use Ruby. Ruby on Rails paved the way for modern Web Development, but in doing so highlighted certain shortcomings. Its "kitchen-sink" approach can sometimes be overkill, particularly for small projects, which led to the proliferation and arguably a golden age of Ruby microframeworks. The success of Sinatra shows that there is a genuine demand for it and its ilk, and the number of them is increasing every few months.
Why are there so many frameworks? Partly because the wonderful Rack makes it incredibly easy for anyone with a basic grasp of TCP/IP to roll their own framework, and partly because by definition, microframeworks are opinionated. The result is that these opinions lead to unscratched itches, which, when combined with a low barrier to entry, has resulted in a plethora of microframeworks on the market. Why would we need another one? Well, we don't. At this point, pretty well every modern web development use case is catered for by something that exists. So why would anyone be interested in Rack-App? Well, that one is easy. This is the framework that powers microservices at Heroku.
Continue reading %Rack-App: A Performant and Pragmatic Web Microframework%
by David Bush via SitePoint
