how to prepare for a Ruby interview in just one weekend

Question

I'm a seasoned web developer but only have a modicum of Ruby/Rails experience. I just got an interview Monday at a Ruby shop, they do realize I don't have much Ruby experience. Besides 2 or 3 Ruby books I have lying around, what other resources might I avail myself of for a weekend crash course in Ruby. I do have a bare minimum account on hostingrails by the way though I've never used it.

I don't see any other exact duplicates of this searching for "ruby interview". I did find http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1092675/what-ruby-knowledge-should-i-have but I'm not sure that that's not overkill or too much for one weekend.

Answer 1

do they realize how 'not much' experience you have? if so, then i'd try to focus more on learning the core concepts and getting excited about the platform. if they have a fair assessment of your ruby knowledge, then presumably they're hiring you on your general developer skills and not your ruby skills.

be honest, be excited, talk about some feature that blows your mind. don't try to wow them with syntax knowledge ;)

Answer 2

I would suggest reading through the rails documentation. Without knowing what particular applications they're working on (e-commerce, basic websites, CMS, etc), it's hard to recommend anything too specific.

I would also recommend reading over the documentation and source of some of the more popular plugins/gems:

• Authlogic (User authentication)
• Paperclip (Image manipulation)
• Subdomain-Fu (Subdomain management)
• Many, many more

Hope my answer helped. Good luck.

Answer 3

There are a lot of nice screencasts on rails on http://railscasts.com/

These have a lot of information on some of the latest gems, with some good introductory stuff as well.

Answer 4

For getting familiar with Ruby I'd recommend working on a problem or two from the Ruby Quiz website. This will get you familiar with the basics of the language, and there's a lot of sample answers that will help you learn some Ruby idioms.

For Rails specific stuff the best way I've seen to get up to speed with a sample app is in the beginning of the Pragmatic Programmers Rails book. If you don't have that book you can quickly get an electronic version for the weekend. I find following along and actually building something in a language or framework is the best way for me to learn.

Answer 5

Start reading all the cool things out there for Ruby/Rails. Fall in love with it. Show that love in the interview.

Know the basic Ruby syntax.

Answer 6

You have no time. If you flop around reading potentially outdated blog posts you're just going to get confused and make no real progress. The Pickaxe book is too broad to really push your knowledge in a short time.

If you only have a couple of days, I'd suggest reading the first five chapters of Metaprogramming Ruby. It's not as intimidating as it sounds, and it will get you up to speed on the things that make Ruby very different from languages you may have used before. The first five chapters would be enough to give you a solid base. You can cover them in a weekend.

If you have time after doing that I'd suggest reading up on RSpec or whatever testing setup your potential employer uses. The RSpec book is a good resource to learn how a Ruby/Rails shop is likely to work.

Others have suggested Agile Web Development with Rails. I wouldn't bother "reading" it at this point. Run through the tutorial if you have time to get an understanding of the Rails vocabulary. Wait to digest the book fully until later.

Answer 7

This morning I found this: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming

Answer 8

The Pragmatic Bookshelf also has an excellent series of screencasts on Ruby Metaprogramming: Its hosted by Dave Thomas, author of several great programming books including: The Pragmatic Programmer and Programming-Ruby-1-9 (ThePickaxe book). This series was a key inflection point in my understanding of and appreciation for Ruby.

The Ruby Programming Language by Flanagan and Matz is another great resource and its co-authored by the creator of Ruby (Matz).