When you are excited about learning a new programming language or technology, there is so much you don’t know, and it’s easy to fall into trying to comprehend every topic you read in books or elsewhere.

I really like Ruby and Rails, and recently I’ve seen books aimed at beginners trying to cover too much.

I’ve seen people struggle with deployment techniques and file versioning systems while they can’t even produce or understand half the code they write. While all this is valuable, it’s not important that you see this niceties right away. Instead, focus on what really matters.

Start big, it’s important that you see the big picture of what you’re going to learn. Next, focus on each little detail, and once in a while take a few steps back to review the big picture. This way, you’ll have a better understanding of how everything relates.