Love this tutorial. Michael is one of the best teachers I've encountered. It's such a great tutorial that I hesitate to ask, but I'm not the biggest fan of the Cloud9 IDE stuff that was added in the later versions, though. Anyone else?
I think the tutorial could really use an explanation of what a web app is (a bunch of files in a particular structure that the special server knows how to handle) and why we need all the setup to handle it. Then it should explain what actions, controllers, and routes are and what they do, instead of just introducing the terms without meanings. It wasn't until the exercises suggested changing the route to a different action that it clicked for me.
BTW, I think that "goodbye world" is a horrible example to use.
Way too hard to really get going, but maybe it's an OK patience screener.