Great introduction for Ruby on Rails. The author's instructions are meant for Mac users with Textmate, an issue that will cause extra barriers for non-Mac users. Many of the steps are now outdated for current versions of Rails and Ruby and will cause crashes and errors. It's an understandable downside to dead-tree programming books. I recommend you use the book's official blog (http://ruby.railstutorial.org) which contains the most up-to-date guide. ( )