Rails has some amazing guides to get you started.
In particular, their getting started guide takes you down the path of creating your own blog. The very first paragraph for this guide says it is intended for complete beginners;
This guide is designed for beginners who want to get started with a Rails application from scratch. It does not assume that you have any prior experience with Rails
Taking you from getting setup, dealing with databases to introducing you Rails MVC; dealing with models and their relationships, the HTML of the views and how Ruby is used within them, and of course, the controllers and matching routes.
After you finish the guide, you have a fully functioning blogging platform with a commenting system. Add a couple of elements and you could make your own 200WAD… That doesn’t seem too bad for a “dying”, “fisher price” framework.
I think it’s important to emphasise something that the guide doesn’t really say. Yes, Rails has much more functionality, but quite often everything described in this guide covers everything you need to make almost any application. If you compare the functionality discussed with your favourite applications - maybe you can imagine how (or hell, even try!) to recreate them.
I’ll write more on this… I think tomorrow I’ll talk about the doctrine.