

Ask HN: What are the best resources for learning Ruby/Rails - d_mcgraw

I'm looking to teach myself a new Web Dev language and have landed on Ruby/Rails. What are the best resources out there for learning Ruby/Rails if you are already a programmer with web experience?
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Construct
Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial is a good start (look closely, there is
free access online):

<http://railstutorial.org/>

It's not perfect, but it does walk you through the process of setting up a
proper environment, using git for version control, and pushing to Heroku for
rapid deployment. He even explains different basics and features of the Ruby
language, so you can start here without learning Ruby if you so desire.
Definitely complete the additional tasks at the end of each chapter as they
are very helpful.

Also, I found it helpful to browse through the many open-source Rails projects
you can find online, particularly on github.

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poloniculmov
If you'd like to learn from a book, Agile Web Development with Rails is nice.
[http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-
with...](http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with-rails-
third-edition)

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csmeder
This book isn't coming out until late 2010, is it worth waiting or buy the 3rd
edition available now?

~~~
mattm
You can buy the ebook now. I have it and it's great so far (2/3rds of the way
done)

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carbon8
Here's my big list from a few months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1088737>

Also, although I've only skimmed mhartl's book, it looks great and has already
been updated for Rails 3: <http://railstutorial.org/book>

And for the edge rails guides (Rails 3): <http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/>

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kellishaver
I highly recommend <http://railscasts.com> if you haven't found it already.
Great stuff ranging from beginner to pretty advanced.

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pritzker221
Not sure why you'd want to learn Ruby/Rails. Ruby has been dropping in use for
a few years now, and it looks like that downward trend will accelerate.

Have you considered Python/Django?

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d_mcgraw
Is that really true? Most of the companies I've talked to are looking for
people with Ruby/Rails experience. I've seen some looking for Python Django
experience, but far less. I currently do Python dev at work. I've looked a
Django, but I wasn't super impressed, but again maybe I'm just not finding the
right resources for learning to work with it. Any suggestions there?

