Hi Peter
Forget about Rails Scaffolding and invest your time to look at Active
Scaffold 
CCH
I dont think this is good advice. I definitely recommend that newbies experiment with the built in scaffolding, to learn the rails conventions and fundamentals. Then, move on, remembering Rails scaffolding, you will probably write your own controllers. Or perhaps pick up a plug in like Active Scaffold (which do I use and like alot, btw) if you want ajaxy tables in your views.