[jboggan]

There is no programmer so intelligent and so experienced that there does not exist a framework which makes no damn sense to them.

I think I'm a decent programmer but the scope and complexity of Rails (especially with all the great concepts and practices Hartl introduces simultaneously) is daunting at first. But you just have to keep at it and it eventually clicks. I think I did his tutorial 3 times from scratch before I really started to understand what was going on, and it wasn't until I tried to make a large and complex app that all the features and beautiful organization of Rails began to feel natural. Rails (or Ruby, or any other insanely powerful tool) just takes a long time to really grok, and even longer to master. Smart people are used to getting things quicker than that and that is what makes all of these things so emotionally painful. Our projects don't work and our egos suffer as well.

[kpennell]

Exactly. The smart people ego thing. Yikes, that's me. Programming is humbling the shit out of me. It really is a good process.

Just slow down, be patient, expect many failures and false starts. Hell, if I can do this, it seems like I'll be better prepared for all sorts of challenges in life.