I'd be interested to know how Padrino compares to Monk.
At first glance Padrino seems closer to Rails in scale - which seems to defeat the whole minimalist mindset behind Sinatra. I mean, if I want Rails, I'll use Rails.
The extensive community support for Rails in combination with the improvements in Rails 3 already makes it difficult to justify using a smaller framework like Sinatra.
Many of the questions I have asked in the Sinatra community have gone unanswered so I imagine using Padrino (or even Monk) would simply add to that problem.
On the other hand, with Rails, the combination of StackOverflow, Google Groups and a plethora of Googleble web resources means you are never far from resolving a holdup.
Padrino developer here. I also like monkrb but if you check out the Padrino guides (http://www.padrinorb.com/guides) you will see that Padrino is quite a bit more full-featured but also modular. You can enable / disable various features of Padrino and even include certain pieces in existing Sinatra apps.
Our team has used Rails and Sinatra both extensively for contract work and I would argue if you give Padrino + Sinatra a try that you will find it does not defeat the mentality of Sinatra. Instead Padrino simply complements the existing feature set with optional enhancements you might frequently need such as form helpers, tag helpers, localization, mailers and more.
I agree that community support for Sinatra and Padrino are considerably lacking in comparison to Rails. I don't think this is something that cannot be fixed however. Sinatra has only recently hit 1.0 stable which means that the community has just begun to grow. I can say our team at least is committed to helping anyone with problems associated with Sinatra/Padrino. Feel free to post any issues here: http://github.com/padrino/padrino-framework/issues if you find any specific problems.
Rails 3 is a simpler Rails that works the way I like it. But with the added advantage of massive community support.
Sinatra (and Ramaze) also have the advantage of having been thoroughly tested and have a lot of eyeballs on them. Using Padrino (and perhaps Monk) creates the risk of (a) encountering framework boilerplate code that is buggy and (b) not having enough help to fix those problems because of insufficient resources on the part of the creators or insufficient community support.
That said, the documentation is impressive and attractive. The only suggestion I would make is the reduce the size of the downloadable screencast - no need for a 210MB video file for 12 minutes of video. Also, the version on Vimeo is unwatchable because it's not HD - it's difficult to read the source code on screen.
Thanks for pointing that out RattaPack. We have actually recently released a blog post addressing some concerns we have noticed since our release here: http://www.padrinorb.com/blog/addressing-concerns-about-padr... . Hope that helps clarify certain things about our framework!
I'm impressed. I've been using Sinatra and a bit of Monk, and I have to say the bundled helpers are very nice. One problem I have with Sinatra is sometimes extensions are fairly sketchy. :/ So I like that more the boilerplate here is somehow "official". Sinatra can use a dash of opinion without losing its ease.
I am trying it out right now, and first impressions are good. That said, for me, Rails for complex apps and Sinatra for web services and simple apps is probably sufficient.
I continue to be pleased with how far the Ruby community has come in the last four or five years. Credit probably goes to Rails for revving up interest in Ruby.
I'd be curious whether this is robust enough to support an ecommerce app. How would one check whether this meets the security requirements for such besides the fact that it's build on Rack?
Padrino Developer here. Our team has developed several ecommerce applications using padrino for various contract jobs. Websites will be deployed soon with links available on http://padrinorb.com. Padrino is built directly on top of Sinatra and should meet any security requirements you might have.
I haven't had a chance to dive in and start a project with this yet, but it looks like a dream come true for people want a slimmed down version of Rails but don't want to sacrifice all of the helpers and goodies that Rails offers. In fact, it looks pretty comparable to CodeIgniter in terms of it's approach to how you use it.
And their docs look great! Super stoked, looks like I have a new weekend project
http://monkrb.com/
I'd be interested to know how Padrino compares to Monk.
At first glance Padrino seems closer to Rails in scale - which seems to defeat the whole minimalist mindset behind Sinatra. I mean, if I want Rails, I'll use Rails.
The extensive community support for Rails in combination with the improvements in Rails 3 already makes it difficult to justify using a smaller framework like Sinatra.
Many of the questions I have asked in the Sinatra community have gone unanswered so I imagine using Padrino (or even Monk) would simply add to that problem.
On the other hand, with Rails, the combination of StackOverflow, Google Groups and a plethora of Googleble web resources means you are never far from resolving a holdup.