My Ruby journey is somewhat atypical in that I started out with Sinatra, and then progressed to Padrino. I still haven't used Rails on any real projects.

By the time I had weaned myself off PHP and was ready to start real Ruby development (having been watching the community for several years with a keen interest), I already knew about things like DataMapper, Haml, Sass, Compass, Cucumber, Rack and Bundler, and I had a few relatively small projects I wanted to get my teeth into quickly.

Rails didn't really seem like the right fit (the less opinionated version 3 was still in beta), so I when I came across Sinatra, I decided to use it for my first production Ruby project.

Being a big PeepCode fan, I bought the Sinatra and jQTouch screencasts to help me get to grips with two new technologies. For me they were the best resource available bar none to explain in detail and clarity the fundamentals of the two frameworks. I was also pleasantly surprised when I realised how well these two technologies worked together upon noticing how the jQT screencast used Sinatra behind the scenes.

After a few months I discovered Padrino and I've already built two production sites with it. It really hits the sweet spot between convention and flexibility, and is based on a very strong underlying architecture.

For inspiration I often refer to the blog example on the website, and the source code of the Padrino website on GitHub, to see how things are done.

An example project with the PeepCode treatment would be awesome. And a great way to coax other developers into the 'family'. ;-)