I’ve considered spending some time coding in Ruby to get a sense of what is so interesting about that language. I’m not ready to start this exercise yet, but I did spend some time looking at Ruby code frameworks. Of course there is Ruby on Rails, but I figured there would be some other frameworks out there and that reading about them would provide some meaningful contrast and tell me what Rails is and what it is not. I decided to list some of the apparently more popular ones for my future reference and yours. Ramaze peaked my interest the most. The Nitro site was missing when I tried it. I included the link anyway in hopes it will be fixed soon.

• Ruby on Rails – If you are not familiar with it, this is the most popular Ruby framework out there.
• Merb – This one seems like it is number 2 or 3 on the heap.
• Camping – Bills itself as a Ruby Micro Framework.
• Nitro – It’s supposed to be 3 years old, but the link did not work when I checked it. I provide it here in the hopes they fix it soon.
• ramaze – A modular Ruby framework. This one allows you to use any adapter, any ORM, any template engine and even any implementation of Ruby. The web site is well done. I think I may have to give this one a spin when I have the time.
• Sinatra – A lightweight framework intended more for prototyping than heavier production sites.