Advise on learning Ruby

Ruby
1

Hello,

I’m still new to programming, with some familiarity of HTML, CSS, and a
bit of PHP/delphi.

Just recently I was learning Java and came across the fundementals of
Programming such as constructors, methods etc. I’m basically at this
stage right now, and still learning.

I actually want to learn Ruby on Rails and get into web development.
However, I have been recommended to learn Ruby first, as it will be
easier to learn RoR. I was told that, with Ruby I can get somewhat of an
understanding of the language itself, instead of going straight into RoR
where I might be able to follow Tutorials, but I may not be able to
actually understand what I’m doing.

So I wanted to ask if anyone could recommend me some good tutorials or
books for beginners like me to learn some Ruby.

Thanks.

2

I am new to Ruby as well. Here are some resources I have found useful:

Mike Hartl has an excellent tutotial here:
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?version=3.2

The Ruby Rouges Pod cast. I have listened to every single one of them.
Not all are for beginners, but I get something out of each one of them.

railscast: http://railscasts.com/

And of course: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/

That is where I have started.

Rod.

3

On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Rod J. [email protected]
wrote:

I am new to Ruby as well. Here are some resources I have found useful:

Mike Hartl has an excellent tutotial here:
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?version=3.2

I second that. Hartl advises people who are primarily interested in
Rails to just dive in and go through railstutorial, and optionally
fill in the blanks with a pure Ruby book next.

4

Try Michael H.'s tutorial called rails tutorial. If you google rails
tutorial it should be the first link. Also, I think The Well Grounded
Rubyist is one of the best books for learning Ruby. His explanation on
what object is self at any given time is one of the best I’ve ever read.

–
Russell
Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/?sig)

5

Thanks for the helpful replies.

I’ll start with Micheal Hartl’s tutorial. Though I did want to ask,
would anyone recommend that I try “Sam’s teach yourself ruby in 21
days”?

@Chad P. thanks, i’ll take a read. Though I currently only have a
Windows OS.

6

Try http://www.oldkingjames.org and click on link top left of page.

7

On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 03:30:53AM +0900, Taz798 U. wrote:

Thanks for the helpful replies.

I’ll start with Micheal Hartl’s tutorial. Though I did want to ask,
would anyone recommend that I try “Sam’s teach yourself ruby in 21
days”?

@Chad P. thanks, i’ll take a read. Though I currently only have a
Windows OS.

The book reviews at least should still be of some use.

I should probably add this to the mix, too – a pair of books reviewed
in
one shot, one of them strongly recommended, the other strongly warned
against because it’s such a terrible book to read if you’re learning
Ruby
(it’ll instill a lot of bad habits):

The Book of (Weird) Ruby, and Eloquent Ruby
http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.194.11.46.40

The TL;DR version is:

Eloquent Ruby is an incredibly good book; if you're at least mildly
familiar with programming, you should probably read it.  The Book of
Ruby is crap; avoid it.
8

On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 01:47:56AM +0900, Taz798 U. wrote:

easier to learn RoR. I was told that, with Ruby I can get somewhat of an
understanding of the language itself, instead of going straight into RoR
where I might be able to follow Tutorials, but I may not be able to
actually understand what I’m doing.

So I wanted to ask if anyone could recommend me some good tutorials or
books for beginners like me to learn some Ruby.

I wrote an article for TechRepublic about good Ruby books a while back
that I think might be helpful. [1]

If you have access to a Unix-like environment in your everyday computing
life, you may want to devote some time to “living” in that environment
enough so that you really learn to make good use of the shell as a
useful
interface to the system. I have found that the fact I spend almost all
of my time that does not involve a web browser in a terminal emulator
window, using the shell and console-based applications, extremely
helpful
when picking up new languages. It gives me plenty of opportunity to
automate and ease little bits of my life by writing admin scripts,
helper
tools, and utilities in whatever language I’m learning at the time,
stretching my skills in the process.

Things that many learning resources for various programming languages
often do not handle well, however, is exactly the sort of stuff that
leads to the development of well-designed command line utilities.
Luckily, information about these things is relatively easy to find on
the
Internet for Ruby, including stuff like:

  • command line argument parsing with OptParse
  • command line filter input (I wrote an articel about that too [2])
  • using backticks, exec, and system to execute shell commands

. . . and so on.

Good luck!

NOTES:

  1. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=3886

  2. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=3481

Please excuse the formatting issues related to inline code samples
(which
have been forced into not-inline code samples by some incredibly stupid
CSS decisions by the design team at CBSi) in my TR articles. Changes to
the CSS for the site were made some time after this article was
published, and my access to my old articles there to fix them up has
evaporated in the interim.