What are/were your go to resources for learning Ruby and Rails?
Nick Taylor
Aug 18
I'm completely new to Ruby, but am not a stranger to backend dev (.NET, Nodejs).
I've checked out the Ruby Quick start, but aside from that, what resources, whether they be books, online resources, videos etc. would you recommend to someone looking to get into the world of Ruby and Ruby on Rails?
Bonus points if you can suggest an e-book before I go camping in three hours? 😜
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I'm a PHP developer, but Ruby is one of the languages that I started with a couple years back. The Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl is highly recommended back then. I learned a lot from that book that is still valuable even when I'm on a different ecosystem now. Though it's quite geared towards beginners... but it wouldn't hurt to check it out.
Michael Hartl's work is so popular that it's practically the canonical source of Rails. Like, even if it's beginner material, it's worth skimming if only to know what other folks are being taught.
I've recently started using RuboCop in my work as well, which has unexpectedly been a great learning resource. It shows me alternate methods and idiomatic syntax that I didn't know or had forgotten about.
To supplement more straightforward tutorials, the Destroy All Software screencasts are absolutely fantastic. Some Ruby stuff, some Rails stuff, some computer theory, Python stuff, it's all over the map, and all incredibly valuable.
I would say that guides.rubyonrails.org is a first place to learn.
Back in the days, RailsCasts and Rails for Zombies was a thing. Nowadays they are not updated anymore (if I remember correctly).
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Like with everything tech I want to learn, I start by reading any quickstart guide is listed on the official documentation, then dive right into the guts of the subject. For Rails, this means running
rails newon some empty directory and try to make some kind of app I already know how to build with other languages, for example the evergreen blog platform.Normally, official docs + lots of googling and StackOverflow for every obstacle I encounter does the job nicely (at least for me)
I've been doing rails for about 10 years now, back in the days the poignant guide to ruby was a fun way to get familiar with the language. And for rails it's about having the official docs at hand and reading others people's code. Reading some of the most popular gems and how they solve common problems can give you an idea of the things you can do
I can't believe I left out the poignant guide!
Hey!
I've made a list, my suggestion is to
gorails.com/ & railscasts.com are great video channels.
Have fun & good luck
I second Michael Hartl's book, and Rails 4 In Action is also good (although getting a little dated now).
As a second book, after you've done a tutorial or three and you're wondering "Now what?," I recommend Practicing Rails by Justin Weiss. Both Justin and Michael have been really responsive and they want to help you, so give those a try.
Ruby:
For a fun start, 4 levels of interactive training with rubymonk.com/ is the one you should try. I can't recommend enough.
Then "Well-grounded Rubyist by David A. Black" is a very popular book for both beginner and pro.
Come back anytime to read any favorite chapter, you don't have to finish the book before starting your new project.
Rails:
I first learnt Rails from a very well-explained Udemy screencast "Dissecting Ruby on Rails 5 - Become a Professional Developer By Jordan Hudgens", just to get the idea and kickstart a new code-along Rails Project.
"Rails official document" is suitable for anyone, some topic is quite adictive to read.
Last but not least, "Read other people's code". It's one of the fastest ways to learn. And of course, it's noy the easiest way. But I find it really satisfying for this kind of approach.
PS. I have learned a lot about Ruby/Rails(the language, the framework, design patterns) from my Ruby team.
Best luck!
Udemy, youtube, railscasts, obsessive reading (The Bastards book of Ruby, The Well Grounded Rubyist, plus loads of online e-books depending on what I was attempting to achieve at the time). There are so so many tutorial videos that are excellent on youtube too. I also joined a bootcamp, which I can highly highly recommend - just for the shared experience of pairing with other people in the same boat as you!
You can take a look at this online course: edx.org/course/agile-development-u...
In addition to ruby and Ruby on Rails, you’ll learn agile development, TDD, design patterns and so on. I highly recommend this corse and the next one. I hope this can be useful to you.
Don't forget
irb(interactive Ruby).It's a great place to get answers to small questions in a hurry.
Keep it open in a shell window, go there when you need to.
For Ruby, I recommend this book
Effective Ruby
I think it's suitable for someone already has some background in programming and wanna learn more about Ruby.
With Rails, nothing better than doing a project, let try to build your own AirBnB website
I learned from techrise.me and YouTube.
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Michael Hartl book is the best resource to start Ruby and Rails.....Once you are done with first 12 chapters you can go to Rails Guides to get a deep understanding of Rails fundamentals and concepts.