[slucha]

Do you mean you will be teaching someone or what you can suggest to someone that goes and reads/does etc to get him to an average programmer?

For me it was always great to see results when learning programming (a website, a mini app). My first contacts in a classroom environment with programming where not successful as they where teaching more theory or how something would work. I really caught on when someone showed me how to write a real (very basic) app. What I was taught had a purpose and output I could immediately see.

Since I started learning rails and used his tutorial I still think that Michael Hartls Rails Tutorial is one of the best to get started. He teaches you the proper concepts (TTD etc.) and techniques while keeping it simple and still building something right from the beginning. Ah yes, and it is free (railstutorial.org/book).

If you will be teaching it to somebody you could also use this book as a guideline, make them work through it and help him with problems. He/she will have a working app in the end and have learned the basics of web development by then.