> No matter how we handle "users", we are going to need to do all 6 things in the list the author presented.

I think maybe your broader thesis is we almost always need all 6 things. And if that's true for you then Rails is a good tool for you.

If we only ever need one out of the 6 things at a time then ActiveRecord is only adding extra complexity for us.

I think OP is basically saying I usually only need one or two and that they'd rather not have the extra layer of indirection... "save(andValidate)" is fine for them. They don't need the orchestration abilities that the declarative "afterSave(validate)" step affords.

DHH's suppress really is a good example. If you are calling save(andValidate) everywhere, you can't really do something like suppress(), because your validation logic is disbursed.

My opinion, and I think maybe OP would agree, is that there's usually a nice, composeable way to get the same problem solved, without resorting to a giant engine that understands all the different parts. But that's just an empirical assertion on our part. Obviously your mileage will vary.