+1 on all the various comments recommending learning Ruby first and then Rails. The Ruby standard library is pretty big, and the language has a large number of

+1 on all the various comments recommending learning Ruby first and then Rails. The Ruby standard library is pretty big, and the language has a large number of syntax options, which means that there are often 30 different ways to do something, and you'll often see over half of those in the real world. Those various options can be undeniably handy at times, but even after working in Ruby for several years it's not uncommon to come across code that uses something you haven't seen before. Rails is great, but it's quite large and also quite clever, and clever can be very difficult to understand unless you have a solid grasp of the language. Starting with something simpler like Sinatra would be a great idea, but I'd still recommend going through a Ruby book first. The most difficult thing for me learning Ruby on Rails was separating what cleverness was coming from Ruby and what cleverness was coming from Rails, learning as much as you can about ruby first would be a huge help.