Learning to Code (with an eye on RoR)

I'm 20 years old (well, 21 on the 17th) and in school for Communication/Business. I've loved starting entrepreneurial projects since I was 7 or 8 years old.

For the past four years or so I've been completely taken with the Web, and launched a few (very) small projects...the thing is, I don't know how to code. At all.

My most ambitious project to date is in the latter stages of development and I'm working with a great freelancer on an equity deal. I'm really into the product and the interface and how people use social products, but as far as doing the actual creating, I'm useless. I love the business side of the Web, but the product is so much fun.

I want to get to the point where I can hack together demos/prototypes with RoR - I started a tutorial (http://railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book) on Monday and have slowly progressed (about an hour each day... I'm on the Heroku part) but I'm wondering if I should learn some basic HTML first or something.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.