[escalona]

I started learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails a few months ago. I've found it much easier to learn the basics of Ruby before diving into Rails. I started with reading Learn to Program by Chris Pines. The book is aimed at someone new to programming. Does a great explaining programming and Ruby.

[jkym]

I second this. Pine's book has good learning flow. It makes you think through programming problems with the tools at hand; it prepares you just enough for practice examples, requiring you to work hard for the answers. This results in a very fun and effective learning process, and a long-lasting knowledge of basic Ruby idioms.