So, before you start with learning Rails, I recommend learning HTML/CSS. It shouldn't take more than two weeks to get a basic understanding, and by doing that you avoid the huge hassle of building a web app while barely scraping by with the formatting. Also, you might want to drop both learning javascript and vim, because you can build a solid web app without js, and it's very hard to learn multiple dissimilar things at once.<p>After that, a great resource is <a href="http://railsforzombies.com/" rel="nofollow">http://railsforzombies.com/</a>, and codeschool in general. It's a series of incredibly well made video presentations, which you are then tested on. Once/before you finish that, you should work on actually building an application, maybe following <a href="http://railstutorial.org/" rel="nofollow">http://railstutorial.org/</a>.<p>Once you have finished that, you are well on your way to proficiency, and probably have enough understanding of rails to build your application. Some great resources are <a href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://guides.rubyonrails.org/index.html</a>, <a href="http://www.codeschool.com/courses/rails-for-zombies-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.codeschool.com/courses/rails-for-zombies-2</a>, and <a href="http://api.rubyonrails.org/" rel="nofollow">http://api.rubyonrails.org/</a>.<p>If you have done that, and you still want to learn more, then I would learn more about javascript, and read The Rails 3 Way:<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321601661/zenruby-20/ref=nosim/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321601661/zenruby-20...</a>. Finally to learn more about Ruby, read Eloquent Ruby: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Series/dp/0321584104" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley-Professio...</a>.<p>Once you have done that, you should have a pretty solid grounding in Ruby, Rails, and web development in general.