learning http and cgi

Question

I just learned ruby, and already have some html/javascript/css background. When i learn rails i found that there's just too much magic. I want to use ruby to create a dynamic website from scratch - just for learning all the underlying stuff. So is there any book or article well suited for me to getting started with? thanks in advance! sorry for my bad english.

Answer 1

Simply Rails 2 and Learning Rails are excellent beginner book on rails.

Answer 2

You should give Sinatra a shot. It's a very lightweight framework which allows you to see what's going on under the hood in a much easier way than in Rails. It'll teach you some basic concepts of Ruby web programming without all the overwhelming stuff that's inside Rails.

If you want to go even deeper, take a look at Rack which is the basic piece of every Ruby web application architecture nowadays. You can create very minimalistic application that are based solely on Rack.