[dkrich]

I think the ideal person who starts learning Rails from scratch is somebody who already has a strong familiarity with concepts of database design and object-oriented programming but is not necessarily greatly experienced in setting up web applications.

Rails takes the underlying concepts of database design and the client/server relationship and makes them very easy to implement. That should not be confused with making the process of learning how to program very easy. For now, there really aren't any shortcuts to learning the old-fashioned way.