[zyphon]

I'd recommend having a mentor over your shoulder (or available online.) It's hard enough to get started the first time around without battling your own brain. Frustration to the point of being painful is how I'd describe it, and the fix (for me) is to have someone there to spend 5 minutes describing how [esoteric thing] works instead of banging my head against intangible frustrations.

Start on meetup.com and hackerspaces.org or just google for <city/state> <topic> user group.

[Tabula_Rasa]

Thanks for the advice, and getting the mentor thing! I went to a Ruby meetup a few months ago, but I didn't have my laptop so I just ended up standing around awkwardly. I've been meaning to look for other groups though, and things that could be a bit more friendly and less opened ended such as talks, workshops, and so forth.