Without trying to start a flame war, while there is definitely good code in Rails, my personal opinion is that the architecture of Rails is not something you ne

Without trying to start a flame war, while there is definitely good code in Rails, my personal opinion is that the architecture of Rails is not something you necessarily want to emulate. And this is really the problem when you are new, I think. Many people will love one thing while others will hate it. It's difficult to create an informed opinion. My advice is actually not so much different than yours. Definitely checkout the Rails internals, but keep a reserved opinion. Then contrast it with other things. From a framework/library perspective look at Sinatra or other web frameworks that that a completely different philosophy. Try to understand the advantages and disadvantages to many approaches. Again, I want to stress that my intent is not to be critical of Rails (heck it provides the bulk of my paycheck and I'm very grateful it exists!). My intent is really to say not to be so hung up about finding good code, but rather take a long term view of comparing different approaches and thinking through for yourself what you think is good. People who have a different view point than mine, shed light in corners that I won't look. That's always a good thing.