Ah, maybe you're right. I think I'm used to convention over configuration setups so it feels a lot more comfortable to me. I think that maybe that's why its so popular with Rails developers because they're used to operating within the bounds of the prescribed architecture and then having to deal with edge cases.

I think, for me, I feel comfortable debugging as long as I understand the idea that is trying to be communicated. I think "weeks of frustration" is a bit of hyperbole but that's just my opinion. I can see days lost... but I think that's true of any technology stack that you're trying to acclimate to.

I also don't know about the last sentence about not recommending it to developers working on small projects. I don't have tight deadline but I find that it's working for my small project. As long as I'm not doing anything too far outside of CRUD operations translating into a view then I'm fine.

I don't think I would power a company with Ember. Though, granted, I don't have the experience to really make a call like that... but I would relay my personal experiences to a single developer looking for advice and suggest it for them if they're used to Rails or Django or some other massive convention over configuration back end framework.