[ayb]

>> Rails is very hard for the beginner to learn, much harder than before.

I think that Rails is hard to learn for several reasons:

* unless you've used it before, you have to learn Ruby too

* Rails is fast moving and has a lot of pieces

* the error messages can be cryptic and hard to decipher

I've been developing with Ruby and Rails for several years now and I still encounter cryptic error messages.

As a newbie I found it incredibly frustrating when Google did not bring up an immediate answer, it basically built a brick wall around me. I don't think this is Rails' fault per se, it's just the nature of the beast.

[chernevik]

I found the Hartl RoR tutorial slow going, and couldn't parse whether my confusion was Rails, or Ruby, or REST concepts (& Rails implementation thereof), or TDD (which I found takes some getting used to). "Learning Rails" seems to involve learning some design practices and process tools that are less mandatory when learning other frameworks. But I'm just a newbie with some Python / Django familiarity, others may take to this stuff faster.

I have found those additions worthwhile. The work I've done in Django has gone a _lot_ faster, and I think better written, for the orientation to REST and TDD.

Perhaps real devs with more experience find these pieces less helpful and more intrusive?