Rails never WAS "for beginners". That was never the focus and intent. The point of Rails is to make developers productive, not to make newbies feel at home. Y

Rails never WAS "for beginners". That was never the focus and intent. The point of Rails is to make developers productive, not to make newbies feel at home. Yes, you could just ignore all the "magic" and treat it like a black box, and you still can. But it wouldn't take you too far, any kind of real application requires real understanding of the concepts and often implementation too. Once you know your ins and outs you indeed can create stuff very fast, taking advantage of all the magical things, and new versions simply have more of this "magic". It helps a lot if you know how it works. It might confuse if you don't. So.. yes, if you have no clue the latest versions of Rails might take you more time to master, at the same time it makes developers "that know" even more productive then before.