Do I have to understand Ruby to learn and use Rails?

[rowalth]

[haslinger]

Sort of. And you will even do so automatically: Ruby on Rails is written in Ruby, so each line of code in your Ruby on Rails application is valid Ruby.

If you want to know, if you have to understand every bit of Ruby before starting your first Rails application, my answer is 'No'. But sooner or later you want to write better code and that means improving your Ruby skills.

You can skip big parts of Ruby for a long time at least, if you are interested in Ruby on Rails, e.g. meta programming. Some parts of Ruby on Rails then will stay magic for you until you decide to learn that parts also.