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Comment by airlair | Hacker News Reader

Beginner here, I'm a mechanical engineer with very little experience with programming. I tried to follow the book this week but found it little bit difficult to follow. Question: Should I go learn the basics of Ruby first or should I power through hoping to learn everything along the way? If you think that I should learn the basics first, would you recommend learnrubythehardway or something else? Thanks in advance!

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As others have mentioned, there are plenty of good Ruby tutorials around. Personally, I thought "why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby"[1] was pretty great. It goes off topic quite a lot, but I think it's a joy to read while still learning the core concepts.

[1] http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

yeah. This is the best textbook I've ever read, period. The tangents are actually quite helpful, because they keep you motivated to keep reading, and slow down the pace a bit. Also check out tryruby.org for an awesome interactive tutorial, which was originally written by the poignant author. Good luck, and chunky bacon (you'll get it when you read the book, which you absolutely should do)!

If you're finding the programming challenging, I recommend Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper.

I started learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails a few months ago. I've found it much easier to learn the basics of Ruby before diving into Rails. I started with reading Learn to Program by Chris Pines. The book is aimed at someone new to programming. Does a great explaining programming and Ruby.

I second this. Pine's book has good learning flow. It makes you think through programming problems with the tools at hand; it prepares you just enough for practice examples, requiring you to work hard for the answers. This results in a very fun and effective learning process, and a long-lasting knowledge of basic Ruby idioms.

Are you specifically trying to learn Ruby on Rails? Or just programming/just web development?

Yes, ruby on rails. Learning to start on a webapp project I have in mind. The reason I want to learn ruby on rails as oppose to PHP or Phython is because my friend/partner is more comfortable using ruby on rails. Therefore, in order to collaborate with him, I should learn ruby on rails. Having said all that, I would still like to hear your opinion on what language I should start on.. if you have one. Thanks.

Learning Ruby on Rails will give you a great understanding of how to build web applications, it will give you lots of tools that let you do so quickly, and it will introduce you to an elegant, powerful language that is a joy to use. But the best reason for you, personally, to learn RoR is that you have a friend and partner that would like to collaborate on something with you, and they are (hopefully!) willing to help you.

Both. Learn ruby and rails.

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