Ask HN: Ruby/RoR, where to begin? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Ruby/RoR, where to begin?

7 pointsFireBeyond10 comments

So, several articles have appeared lately, talking about the fast-moving nature of RoR, and its ecosystem. Any information on getting into RoR from the PHP world, books/ebooks, sites, blogs, tools. I've heard a lot about RVMs, etc... but sifting through current and old pages, finding "good" tutorials, and so on is quite the undertaking.

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Good for you. I've started working with Ruby and RoR about three weeks ago now, also from PHP. These are some of the the things I've read/watched to get a grasp on the whole:

Why's Poignent Guide To Ruby http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

I found the RailsCasts invaluable. It's great to just see someone code stuff, instead of finished examples: http://railscasts.com/

Read every one of the Rails guides: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/

I started reading Russ Olsen's Eloquent Ruby yesterday, which is absolutely awesome. I'm already half way trough. Wish he could rewrite every programming book I ever read. http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley-Professio...

It felt really daunting at first, because it seems there's so much new stuff to learn (Ruby, Rails, Passenger/Phusion, Gems, Capistrano, RVM, Rake, db migrations, etc etc). But hang in there. As I said, I started only a couple of weeks ago and already feel like I never want to go back.

Michael Hartl's "Rails Tutorial" is probably one of the most up-to-date and comprehensive tutorials: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

There's also the latest Agile Rails Development book, which covers 3.0.x: http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile-web-development-with...

I recently used the Apress book "Beginning Rails 3," and I thought it was very well done and easy to understand for a beginner. It takes you through the building of a basic blog application and touches on pretty much all the important areas. I found the more involved tutorials on the web a little hard to follow for some reason.

After you have the basic understanding from a book or otherwise, the best thing to do is just start on your own project and rely on Google/Stack Overflow when you hit a roadblock.

I'll throw in my two cents on this one. If you don't feel like reading then you should pop on over to NetTuts and check out their "Ruby for Newbies" screencast. There are 11 of them I believe and you can find the first one here: http://goo.gl/jBBY

In addition to Ruby for Newbies they have loads of other tutorials and videos that aren't limited to just Ruby.

TryRuby.org and Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby are good foundations for Ruby. Then RailsForZombies.com is a completely browser based interactive tutorial for Ruby on Rails, from there I too would recommend the Rails Tutorial which just got a Rails 3.1 Chapter today.

Learning Ruby and Rails, where would you start? http://ontwik.com/ruby/learning-ruby-and-rails-where-would-y...

I am working through this tutorial right now and it is phenomenally useful. Explains exactly the right amount for me: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

I will have to say http://www.codeschool.com/ , try the Zombie Rails tutorial, the best learning tool out there by far

RailsCasts is a great resource: http://railscasts.com/

To better understand Ruby itself, which is critical:

http://rubykoans.com/

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