[foobert]

i was having similar trouble with the hartl book and got discouraged.

I recommend doing these ruby tutorials and then the rails tutorials on this website: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/

The projects are much shorter, and you very quickly realize the power of programming with ruby and rails.

Now i'm jumping back into the hartl book and everything has been making sense.

the jumpstart tutorials are very small, and once you create a rails app enough times you realize how much work its actually doing for you.