A typical Rails instance will use 100 - 150mb, and does not take a minute to start up. Have you actually used Rails? I have several large projects and none have ever taken that long to startup.
I use Ruby for non Rails projects all the time and had no issue finding how to include Active Record and Action Mailer into a Ruby CLI application.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ex8EEv-WPs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUNdKVG2W-8
A typical Rails instance will use 100 - 150mb, and does not take a minute to start up. Have you actually used Rails? I have several large projects and none have ever taken that long to startup.
I use Ruby for non Rails projects all the time and had no issue finding how to include Active Record and Action Mailer into a Ruby CLI application.