I found that skimming the Test Driven Development sections helped cut down the amount of material I needed to get through. Already knowing web development is a

I found that skimming the Test Driven Development sections helped cut down the amount of material I needed to get through. Already knowing web development is a good prerequisite as well, and Michael Hartl's Learn Enough series should be able to fill in some of the gaps. Rails didn't make a lot of sense to me until I learned some Ruby, HTML, CSS, and enough Javascript & jquery to manipulate the DOM and make ajax calls. Rails is not really for new learners in my opinion, since the famous Rails magic can obscure what's happening under the hood, and the framework itself has grown and evolved over the years. Nodejs is better for new devs in my opinion, but Rails really shines once you have the basics and a couple of small apps under your belt.