You're starting at a tricky time. Rails 2.3 is still a great, stable platform and should be sticking around for quite some time. Rails 3 does have many improve

You're starting at a tricky time. Rails 2.3 is still a great, stable platform and should be sticking around for quite some time. Rails 3 does have many improvements, but it's still a "beta" in every sense of the word as many of the plugins don't work yet, or require many modifications to work. I still think just about the best book/introduction to Rails is the Pragmatic Programmer book: http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with-rails-third-edition http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with... - They don't yet cover Rails 3 yet, but in the meantime you could fill in the gaps with weblog posts and the like. If you get a solid grip on 2.3, you should have no problem adjusting to 3.0 once it becomes final.