[brianmario]

"It's just ruby."- My favorite quote from one of the best Ruby programmers I know, who at the time had very little to no experience with Rails.

I'd say any framework has a "steep" learning curve, after which things just become easier and easier.

A problem I often see is that a lot of people try to learn Ruby through Rails; And while that may work for some basics, a lot of things are still going to be "magic" until you understand Ruby itself a little better.