I find it hard to imagine that there is any web framework still around that could be more screwed up than Struts. After having had some major exposure to the various members of the Struts family and Rails, I would say that the experience of using Struts 2 is slightly worse than using Rails while being flogged by an expert torturer. :-)
If you want to test the world beyond MS I would recommend (apart from Rails or Django) looking into the Scala/Lift (my preferred toolset), Clojure/Compojure or JavaScript/Node.js combos (depending upon you language preferences).
I would be careful with Rails, when you plan to do some heavy data processing and/or if you need your application processes to run for a long time without being restarted.
For small, straightforward applications or prototyping the Ruby/Sinatra/MongoDB combo is also really really nice.
I would be careful with Rails, when you plan to do some heavy data processing and/or if you need your application processes to run for a long time without being restarted.
Heavy data processing yes, but the long running process is bogus. The major memory leaks in Rails were patched up years ago. The tooling is a lot better today on the off chance that you do need to debug a memory leak, and the new breed of ruby runtimes such as Rubinius will keep memory in even tighter control.
Being somewhat problematic for long running process is not only a function of memory leaks.
Even with the better runtimes now available, suggesting that they come close to the stability (and performance and long term memory consumption and profiling + debugging capabilities) you'll find on the big JVMs is not really helpful (JRuby being the obvious exception but even here I am sceptic).
If you want to test the world beyond MS I would recommend (apart from Rails or Django) looking into the Scala/Lift (my preferred toolset), Clojure/Compojure or JavaScript/Node.js combos (depending upon you language preferences).
I would be careful with Rails, when you plan to do some heavy data processing and/or if you need your application processes to run for a long time without being restarted.
For small, straightforward applications or prototyping the Ruby/Sinatra/MongoDB combo is also really really nice.