I found that Ruby on Rails (RoR) is very convenient, because it have some many helpers and special tags to reduce my work load, but I find this is difficult to understand the symbol in RoR. It seems that RoR includes some special syntax / symbols. And the API is not easy to read like Java. How can I get a better understanding of this special syntax/symbol and APIs in RoR?
For example, "=>" is very odd for me.
The guides would be a good place to start - http://guides.rubyonrails.org/
Read the pickaxe book to learn Ruby and these suggested rails books.
I'm sure guides are better these days, but if you're serious I'd just grab the Agile Development with Rails book. I learnt Rails 1 with an earlier edition, and I've had co-workers use it when they learnt Rails 2. I find it hard to imagine a better crash course in the subject. It's not particularly deep but it'll give you a good feel of what's possible with rails. I also found having a physical book on my lap handy compared with looking up electronic guides.
It sounds to me that you have fundamental Ruby questions (ie: the => is not a Rails thing, it's a Ruby thing).
The best Ruby book I've found is Matz and Flanagan's O'reilly The Ruby Programming Language. It's not a beginner's Ruby book, but gives you lot and lots of detail when you need it.
Yes, learn Ruby first. There are tons of online tutorials, but if you need a book, the PixAxe book from Pragmatic Programmger will work:
As for Rails, I echo the recommendation on the Agile Rails book, but in addition, the Learning Rails book from O'reilly is pretty good as well for beginners (I understood Rails far better with that book than the Agile book - the Agile book really shines when you need the details on the Rails framework).
