They should. They'll also find it helpful to learn what a command line is and how to operate it. Oh, and HTML -- got to know HTML. And Javascript seems to be

They should. They'll also find it helpful to learn what a command line is and how to operate it. Oh, and HTML -- got to know HTML. And Javascript seems to be pretty popular these days... at least enough to operate jQuery. Then there's SQL, because even Rails developers will get their hands dirty at some point. Of course, we wouldn't want to start them with data programming because they've got imperative programming, object oriented programming, and MVC architecture to get on top of first. We'll start with simple syntax that as many as 1/4 of you will understand after a week of classes: "a = 10; b = 5; c = a + b; #What is the value of a now?" After they get through that a quick course in Linux system administration with a refresher on the file system metaphor ("Its like Facebook... actually, no, it is wholly unique to your experience and every person you'll be working with has forgotten that twenty years ago it confused them, too, so expect not-so-good natured ribbing when you ask questions."), and how to use Google, StackOverflow, Github, and a version control system designed by a supergenius who doesn't care what your fingers think about getting bitten. Sweet, that gets us to Hello World. OK, now let's start doing useful work: meet your new friends, the letters A, P, I and the number "countless." Here's the Stripe API, go charge credit cards. Ugh, wait, you set the name value of the credit card text field in your HTML, which results in the credit card number getting written to production.log, thus causing us to fail PCI compliance. Don't you know anything? Seriously: I think young college graduates would be very, very well served by skilling up on things that are commercially valuable rather than the blather that comprises a lot of what passes for education. That said, "just learn Ruby on Rails" perhaps does not appreciate how much of a gap there is between the bottom half of the US college-bound population and an engineer capable of commercially valuable work.