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.

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.

Thanks.

[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

[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 → tptacek]

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.

[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.

[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