Where to learn Ruby on Rails | Hacker News Reader

Where to learn Ruby on Rails

I have no technical or programming background/education.

Where's the best & quickest place for me to go to learn Ruby on Rails?

Thanks in advance.

Your first step should actually be to learn Sinatra (http://sinatrarb.com). It's less "magic", and will help you get your head around what's going on. Then, after that, Michael Hartl's free online Rails Tutorial (http://railstutorial.org). Also, although some of the older ones are dated, the screencasts at http://railscasts.com are great.

Why do you want to learn RoR?

If this is for a single project that you have in mind...better off to outsource the development or partner with a developer & focus on marketing, sales and other revenue generating

If you want to become a programmer, check out book "Learn to Program" by Chris Pine. Be warned though, its not just RoR you will need to learn but also database design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript at the very minimum before you will really be able to do anything.

I'm outsourcing my current project... at least to get the prototype.

I want to learn it for long-term rewards. It all sounds a little daunting though..

Like any crafts person be it a carpenter or indeed a surgeon, even once you learn the tools of your trade & fill your head with all of the theory and academic knowledge required - learning how to apply this, to actually create a great product takes practice & experience.

If you are aiming to quickly develop and bring an idea to market, I would recommend hiring or partnering with a developer with a solid background, maybe reduce the feature set you intend to develop for version 1 to the bare minimum. Try and use the best resources you can within your budget.

While non-developers do learn to code & launch applications in short periods of time, these cases tend to be the exception, I've seen people with sales & marketing backgrounds struggle for years to code products and never get them launched.

I don't want to sound negative, but taking a product through the entire lifecycle yourself, while also trying to drum up sales, with no technical background....it's going to be tough going.

I would plan to learn it, while at the same time have someone else develop this project. So I'm not delaying my work, I'm just learning while the work is going on.

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