

Ask HN: What books helped you learn Rails? - marcamillion

I am going through Chris Pine's Learning to Program Ruby book, and am loving it.<p>Are there any good books out there, written in a similar - easy to understand - tone as Chris Pine's Ruby book is? Please list all recommendations that have helped you and you like.<p>Thanks.
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ApolloRising
There are quite a few choices. You won't go wrong with any of these from
amazon. (URLS provided by amazon, not a spam or affiliate link)

Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to
Professional) (Paperback) <http://amzn.com/1590597664>

Simply Rails 2 by Patrick Lenz Permalink: <http://amzn.com/0980455200>

Head First Rails: A learner's companion to Ruby on Rails by David Griffiths
Permalink: <http://amzn.com/0596515774>

Beginning Rails: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to
Professional) by Jeffrey Allan Hardy Permalink: <http://amzn.com/1590596862>

I suggest you pick up a version control book as well: svn or git from
pragmatic programmers, may as well get this part done early so it becomes
transparent.

Good luck

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tptacek
Don't learn Rails. Learn Sinatra. You can pick up everything you need to know
to build complex web apps in Ruby off three pages:

* <http://www.sinatrarb.com/intro.html>

* <http://datamapper.org/getting-started.html>

* <http://datamapper.org/docs/create_and_destroy.html>

I'm not saying Sinatra is better than Rails (although, for some problem
spaces...). What I am saying is that once you've mastered Sinatra, which will
take a day or two, everything in Rails will make 10x more sense. And, in
particular, you'll avoid some major pitfalls that catch Rails newcomers, like
relying on scaffolding and generators, or reaching for plugins for simple
problems, or overdesigning your application.

~~~
percept
Agreed. Learning Sinatra means learning Ruby and not someone else's
abstractions (or DSL or whatever you want to call it).

With that knowledge gained one might stick with Sinatra, or even move to Rails
with a better understanding of and appreciation for what the framework offers.
Either way it's a win.

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trevorturk
I'd read the guides and then try to understand how a simple example
application works. Then, try to deploy it to Heroku, make some modifications,
and see your changes in the real world.

Here's some links:

<http://guides.rubyonrails.org/index.html>
<http://github.com/trevorturk/static/> <http://heroku.com>

I think tptacek makes a good point, too, though. Learning how Sinatra works
and checking out some example apps there might be a good way to start as well.

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Janteh
Agile Web Development with Rails, 3th Edition served me well. Still going
through the advanced sections, I think it covers most aspects. I have no
experience with the book you mentioned so I don't know if they are similar.

<http://amzn.com/1934356166>

