If anything, you might be a bit lost at times if you ask too many questions in the first chapter or 2 of Ruby for Rails. When he says a breadth first approach, he means it. You create a simple rails app right away, and you don't get much explanation, so if you start to tinker you will wonder why things are kind of incomplete. They are. It is an attempt to take you through the overall process all at once. Then he breaks it down a bit more. Explaining some things, like how somethings in Rails are the way they are because of how Ruby can do things. That's true. As you get going though, you will want and should stop and get the Pickaxe book. It really is indispensible. The only bad thing is that it is not sold as a two volume set rather than as one behemoth monster that is half reference and half tutorial. It would be much easier to keep the reference half at home and take the other with you or vice-versa. (pragmatic does sell pdf versions of its books though!)