So this is exactly how I got started on a silly Ethereum side project over the holiday. Truffle, solidity docs, and reading the crypto kiddies code is all you need. I'm mostly interested in how Ethereum and other blockchain technologies work - there's no denying that building a dapp is just a fundamentally different experience from building a web app today and that in itself is exciting.

I'm mostly not interested in anything financial. Decentralization, immutability, and a built-in way to pay for usage are the main features of Ethereum (possibly combined with IPFS) that get me going.