I apologize for calling you terrible, but pagekalisedown called him clueless and you chimed in with agreement. The guy's completely new to gamedev and eager... it seems pretty terrible to go out of our way to specifically try to destroy his enthusiasm by calling him clueless.
That said, you're spot-on about how a raytracer is an excellent (and fun!) project that every graphics programmer should do at least once.
But... if you're saying "in order to get started doing any kind of 3D programming, such as moving a cube around, then you should first write your own raytracer"... then we'll have to agree to disagree. =)