Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Rails, on a relatively clean system, is so easy to install through the command line that if you can't do that work...then you may not be the kind of person who can easily debug a basic Rails app in the first place...Not trying to be elitist here, as I'm the kind of person who runs homebrew scripts without reading the actual scripts. Just saying that if you can't even do that, then all the post-installation work of Rails is going to be a painful slog.
A significant portion of the Rails ecosystem -- who we should encourage -- is people coming into web development from a background which doesn't include an engineering degree or years of command line experience. For example, many of them are designers or folks who've otherwise built web pages, for whom <h1><%= @post.header %></h1> is an awesome step forward in terms of their ability to deliver software which solves actual problems.
Eventually, a few years from now, they'll have a better understanding of the full stack, but for now, we want to clear as many possible roadblocks from their way so that they don't either abandon web development or begin using Programming languages which are reasonably Hospitable to People who come from non-traditional backgrounds.
Technologies require mindshare - Tokaido is software conversion optimisation for Rails.
Also "relatively clean system" is an important qualifier. A lot of curious developers won't have one of those, and instead will have to deal with dependency hell and tedious gotchas.
Jumping into learning about the framework is better use of their time upfront.
Having spent a morning this week showing journalism students at Mizzou how to install Django, I would very much like the ability to say "oh you want to try rails? Just download Postgres.app and Tokaido.app and you're set."
Also, this is a weird conversation to be having with a dude who has a book for teaching beginners Ruby (http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/ )!
Ha! I'm all about teaching beginners how to use Ruby, which is painful in itself. By the time they get to Rails, they had better be used to typing in commands at a text prompt :)
No seriously, though...So many things can easily go wrong with basic Rails...not because Rails is bad, but because Rails has so many features...that if people haven't mastered the art of Googling lines from debug-output or command-line install instructions...then the time they've "saved" by having a push-button solution will be more than spent in the time trying to get off the ground.
But I'm obviously speaking from hindsight...as I've gotten more experienced, I've seen that writing script for minimal apps is more efficient than launching a full-fledged Rails app. However, I may have lost interest in the whole web-app game long ago if I didn't have the chance to play around (clumsily) with Rails 2.2
