[UPDATE] I don’t know anything about this book and the fact that it’s Ruby is not interesting but the quotes and snippets are: here

Oscar posted “Rails Is Not For Beginners“. His general assertion is that Rails is complex and has a lot of code making it difficult for beginners… and that Sinatra is a better tool because it’s only a fraction of the code. (about 100:1)

I responded to the original post with this comment:

“not for beginners” is mostly true but meaningless. The noobs have adopted it instead of VB. However, I think that it’s a little more complicated than that and is much a psychological mystery as trying to understand the stock market.

There is something to be said about “full stack awareness” and sinatra’s LOC makes that easier. Sinatra also allows you to get some real work done. My intuition tells me that sinatra does not do as much fancy META magic under the covers as Rails does; which is more of a property of the language than the framework.

My issue with noobs, rails and ruby… is that while the “UNIX way” suggests building projects on top of each other like layers of a cake. Many of the useful GEMS have such deep dependencies that FSA is extremely unlikely… If the MBAs that ran our companies fully appreciated the complexity and risk then Rails would still be in the drawing room.

While I agree with the assertion I think it’s probably a little more complicated than that. The fact of the matter is that “most” and not “all” beginners suck at programming. It’s not enough to know language syntax or to have built a few hosted and dynamic websites. This career/profession requires a lot more attention to detail, situational awareness … and with all due respect to Dorsey … a finely tuned intuition; in addition to the syntax and idioms of at least 3 or 4 mainstream languages. Not to mention plenty of business awareness.