Nope. This is a misnomer that get's passed around a lot, and it's not based on anything factual. It's also dangerous, because people will read that and think "oh, i guess rails is bad". but it's not.

When you leverage the framework and best practices, it's great. There are different styles that can make things more complex, sure - but that's by no means the fault of rails.

People can go overboard at any level of the stack - rails won't stop you from this. Things can get sloppy and not perform efficiently - or become convoluted. again - not the fault of rails.

Sometimes, you need a little magic. Ruby (and rails) makes this possible. But if you rely heavily on magic, it'll bite you in the end.

But the great ones restrict how you can do those things down to a few patterns (in a way that doesn't actually seem like a restriction).