They're not dictating how you use JS, best practices, or anything like that, it's simply a pipeline for compressing and delivering assets. You also don't have

They're not dictating how you use JS, best practices, or anything like that, it's simply a pipeline for compressing and delivering assets. You also don't have to use it if you don't want to. There is a "config.assets.enabled" option in application.rb that you can set to "false" to turn it off. Bottom line is Rails is, and always has been, and opinionated framework, which you choose to buy in to. And even in recent years they've been better about letting you opt out of certain parts of it.