I was in the same situation but had the opposite experience. Rails freed me from the minutiae of the type of programs you'd write in school. I think the bigge

I was in the same situation but had the opposite experience. Rails freed me from the minutiae of the type of programs you'd write in school. I think the biggest advantage of rails/etc. is that you DON'T need to understand every detail to get real work done. Rails for zombies and the rubyonrails.org as well as http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book Those resources + a genuine interest in building web apps pushed me over the edge.