broad overview of software/web development?

yeah I would start with doing the html, css, and javascript deep dives. Then move on to php before doing the ruby on rails projects. There is a lot of information in the ruby on rails deep dives and I can see how its confusing. The php project is much smaller and easier, so i would do that one first.

So as not to repeat myself, a few months ago I wrote up my thoughts on learning Ruby on Rails in a different thread.

Once upon a time some idiot decided that RoR was a great thing to teach beginners. It's not, and it's probably going to do more harm than good if you continue with it.

You say "kinda blown away by the complexity and all the moving parts of what makes the web work the way it does." You're right, Rails is incredibly complex. You should not have to learn a billion things to get started.

Here's what to do if you have no experience...

First, learn HTML. HTML is the base format of all web communications. No matter what you're writing, it's likely to be output to HTML eventually. Learn how to use all your HTML elements and make well-formed documents.

Second, learn how to style that HTML with CSS. Making a few pretty things is easy but there are three things you MUST understand on a deep level to really get how CSS works: the box model, inheritance (the cascade), and specificity. Study about managing large scale CSS projects with something like OOCSS.

Third, JavaScript. You can use JS on both the server and client. It's the most important programming language on Earth going forward and you absolutely cannot avoid it. With those three things you should be able to do anything client side.

Now learn how to deploy those things. Learn about how web servers work and the basics of how communications happen on the Internet.

Next you'll want to learn your first server side language. PHP is probably the most common and easiest to start with. PHP used to be a terrible language but recent versions have improved it significantly. The web's most popular server side software, WordPress, is powered by PHP. Once you get these things down, you have the ability to get paid for working on the web. Ruby is another option here although deployment and ecosystem of Ruby can get very complex. Another choice is Node.js. With Node, you can actually forget learning PHP or whatever because you'll be writing both server and client code in JavaScript.

At that point you'll probably want to learn about databases and how to cache that data. You will be wise to learn as much SQL as you can stomach although many write through an object-relational mapper (ORM) which is a database wrapper that allows you to write database code in the language you prefer. PHP has these and so does Rails. It's called ActiveRecord and if you like it you can pull it out and use it separately.

Once you get to that point, then maybe try to come back and work with Ruby on Rails if you still want. Rails is great in making it simple for very small teams to manage very complex code but as a teaching tool, I consider it an absolute non-starter. It requires entirely too much domain-centric knowledge to simply get started.

thanks everyone for the 2 cents. going to look into php, and also go deeper w/ the HTML, CSS and javascript as Paul suggested.