Yep, it leaves the code looking nice and tidy.

More importantly, it means you don't have to repeat yourself by saying "gem 'sinatra'", then "require 'sinatra'" later on, so it's impossible for the 'gem' statements and the 'require' statements to get out of sync.

I'm glad it was useful.

sinatra-more looks really interesting. I may have to start using that for its tag helpers; the last view I wrote in this Sinatra app, I was really missing the Merb/Rails-style form helpers.