(warning: going a little off topic here, sorry) Might I ask how you got started in the first place? I've got a fairly reasonable background regarding the theory of it [programming], I know the principles of OO and basic algorithms, etc., but in school we don't cover the actual writing of code. (And even if we did, it's probably safe to assume it'd go nowhere near as far as I'd like it to.) Anyway, I picked up some Ruby lately, worked through a bunch of tutorials, and it's been going decently - at first much too easy for someone like me, then challenging, but then there's stuff I just don't know how to do. On the one hand, I've repeatedly had big problems with blocks in Ruby - I can't seem to grasp why to use such a weird format when you could just use regular loops instead. On the other hand, and much more importantly, I don't really know where to go from there. I can't write any real programs, and I'd like to get into Rails eventually (as a gateway to Web developing as a whole).

Edit: Out of the tutorials that I did, this one[1] was the one I liked most, as it had a lot of cool tasks that you could just try and solve for yourself, it really helped me get the basics down. However, none of the tutorials have gone any deeper than that one, and as I'm sure you'll agree, I'm not exactly a programmer yet after that tutorial :) Additionally, I've started to read this[2] book, but it appears to follow a really strange direction and is generally not very pleasurable to read (IMO). And, again, the moment it tries to explain blocks to me I just stand there puzzled.. dropped it after I hit that point, as I did with all the other materials I've tried out so far.

Again sorry for hijacking the thread and apologies for being unable to offer any advice on your situation. Regards

[1] http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

[2] http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/

Edit2: Alright, just saw you've been a developer for longer than I've even used a computer :) So I suppose you can't answer this question either, bah. Wish there were more people that didn't get into programming either 1950 or at age 5. Really, where does someone start nowadays when they're 20 and have no clue.