Hi Eric,
The core migration scripts are a great starting place. A month ago I had also never programmed in Ruby before as well.
In fact, a few days ago I wrote a custom PHP script to help with migration (a long decade of PHP years behind me) but decided to rewrite in Ruby and “its a piece of cake” LOL
Now, I am a Ruby fan!
Ruby looked a bit strange to me at first but now its starting to make sense.
Just jump in feet first and you will be fine!
Or… hire one of the coders here to help you!