
What is the best RoR book for beginners? Best online resources? - ballred

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dawie
By far the best: Agile Web Development with RailsSecond Edition
<http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails2/>

DHH wrote it.

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dawie
Ruby for Rails is a good one too. I haven't read it though.
<http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Rails-Techniques-Developers/dp/1932394699>

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grahamr
I highly recommend the Lynda.com online training for rails:
<http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modListing.asp?sid=229> It does a great
job of explaining the theory of rails and is a great intro to ruby as well.

Obviously Agile Web Development with Rails is the bible of RoR books:
<http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails2/>

I'd personally be wary of many of the RoR tutorials you'll find online: none
of the ones I used did a good job of explaining rails at the conceptual level:
you'll end up with a rails app from the tutorial, but limited understanding of
what you did and why.

Updated:

This page has a good selection of relevant books:
<http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-and-Rails-Books-the-essential>

My opinion is that one should begin with a Rails-specific book or tutorial and
not feel the need to learn Ruby first. Much of rails code is specific to rails
and, while you'll want to master Ruby eventually, you'll get enough from the
Rails books.

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jamongkad
I second the thought on getting Agile Web Development with Rails. Best damn
book I've ever bought concerning Rails. It is true that there is code specific
for Rails(which kinda peeves me from my comfortable Ruby shell) but I highly
recommend you learn Ruby first just to get the feel of programming in it. I
must say coming from Java(ugh) programming is Ruby is such a pleasure. As long
as you can think idiomatically then you're pretty much set!

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jkush
<http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1816/top-ruby-on-rails-tutorials>

List of 12 very good tutorials.

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madanella
<http://poignantguide.net/ruby/> is one of the most entertaining writings I
have read, not just out of technical books, overall. Highly recommended.

Rolling On Rails from OnLamp is a very quick and useful tutorial found here:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html>

This is the easiest and fastest way to get started:
<http://tryruby.hobix.com/>

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grahamr
Use this tutorial from oreilly/onlamp instead:

<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/12/14/revisiting-ruby-on-rails-
revisited.html>

It's nearly 2 years more recent and up-to-date with Rails changes.

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martin
"Ruby for Rails" by David A. Black is a good choice if you're new to Ruby as
well as Rails. It spends a lot of time on Ruby fundamentals and only brings in
the Rails stuff after having explained the necessary bits of the language so
that it actually makes sense. I read the Agile book first, and as a Ruby
newbie, it gave me only a very vague understanding of the language. R4R did a
much better job of that.

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rjb
I have to second this. "Ruby for Rails", I feel, is a great resource for
learning not only the Ruby language, but how to program with it. It really did
not need the Rails section. I've only flipped through "Beginning Ruby"
(apress), but that looks like a good Ruby book too.

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briandon
I've heard good things about 'Ruby on Rails: Up and Running':

<http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rubyrails/>

