Because PHP is a framework disguised as a language.
Will Passenger just serve up ERB files just like PHP? Now I'm curious.
You don't need Passenger. Just write the sinatra app, then 'ruby <yourapp>.rb'.
He isn't talking about the sinatra example. He is talking about apache/passenger serving .erb files directly as apache/mod_php does for .php files.
I don't think it can(I did a quick search to confirm). But with apache, you can install a ruby script as cgi which renders the erbs and returns them.
heh. It does if he wants to later complain about html and php code all mixed up.
The only reason that is true is that he chose not to use a micro framework for php.
That's fair, I took that particular whinge out.
You could have investigated micro php framework like silex tbh (silex.sensiolabs.org), with which you could have used Twig template (twig.sensiolabs.org). A bit an overkill for such a trivial task, though.