who has never programmed before. I learn visually, so tutorials through video's and/or college courses are the best for me...I really want to understand programming to build dynamic web site apps but I am really cautious since many tutorials start off above my head and I become discouraged (since I don't get it). I know I have to start at an entry level, I just can’t seem to find that entrance. I am picking RoR since I have read many state how efficient it is, meaning fast implementation without 1000’s of lines of coding. Thank you...

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Ruby on Rails *is* definitely very efficient at deploying functional sites quickly. However, like many tools, you can use it much more easily if you have a good understanding of what's going on under the hood first, so to speak. To know what goes into creating that functionality before letting Ruby do it for you.

I strongly recommend learning PHP or ASP.NET for web development first. These are more traditional languages that are actually easy to learn, even though getting your website up and going in those languages will take more lines of code and longer time, you will have a complete understanding of how it works. If you try to use RoR to build a solution without understanding what it is doing for you, you will have a very difficult time. RoR is also more for experienced developers - most of the community is built around people who already have the experience using other languages, and choose to use RoR for certain rapid-deployment projects.

Though of course, keep in mind that RoR is not a magic solution that is simply faster and easier than every other one out there. It is simply a tool to get something that "just works" up and running more quickly. Actually taking that from a rapidly-assembled generic-purpose application to a highly specific, deeply functional web application is no faster in RoR than in any other language or platform.

Ultimately, you will find the most college courses and training courses for ASP.NET. There is a myriad of resources online and books for both PHP and ASP.NET. Most beginners seem to like PHP better because it is more forgiving of mistakes, but ASP.NET is a more formal language, which means it is much more similar to the highly object-oriented Ruby. It will be easier to transition from ASP.NET to Ruby, IMO.

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I tried learning PHP first for server side web developement and ended up liking Ruby better. If you already know XHML and CSS, then Ruby on Rails is the next logical step. I am a newbie to programming languages and read Chris Pine's "Learn to Program" (which uses Ruby as the examples). I think it is a great programming language to learn first. The syntax is the most human readable that I have ever seen.

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