Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: What are the best resources for learning Ruby/Rails
15 points by d_mcgraw on Aug 24, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments
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?



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.


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...


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


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


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


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/


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?


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?


What is your source?

Indeed.com shows no such drop in Rails job offers. Both Rails and Django are showing growth in the percentage of job offers: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=rails,+django&l=

If you fall back to a language-only search, then Python shows a bigger slice of the pie, but the original question was about web frameworks. http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,+ruby&l=





Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: