Newbie Web Designer needing Advice for Ruby on Rails

Question

Hi,

I have been designing small and simple sites for years now, I have somehwat experience of PHP but I have good grasp over HTML and CSS and on Wordpress.

Now, I want to try my hand on Ruby on Rails as well, just to get a hang of it and to be able to edit pre-written code.

Please help me where to start and what to learn first, including articles, tutorials, books, videos, samples etc....

Any kind of help in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Zaid, There are quite a few resources out there, but two online ones spring to mind The official Ruby on Rails guides and Ryan Bates' screencasts. If you want some more detailed information try getting hold of Agile development with Rails, but you might want to wait a little while as Rails 3 will be out of beta relatively soon, so the 2.3 version of the book may be obsolete.

Answer 2

I come from a non-programming background. I have learned PHP on my own and recently joined a firm that specializes in Ruby on Rails. They have a comprehensive Rails training program, which is flexible enough to accommodate whatever changes we want to implement. Though I am not a rails pro, I would like to share my experience with rails. I hope that it helps.

Here is the path I am following [combined with tools I am using]

• Start with a simple ruby guide. It will help a lot, since entire rails framework revolves around classes and objects.
• Environment and OS are not important. Though I am working on a Mac, I frequently work on Linux and Windows, and I do not face any problems.
• Start with a good book which explains using a demo app. [I am using Agile Web Development with Rails - By The Pragmatic Bookshelf]. There are many other good books as well.
• Once you are done with the application, you will have a good idea of the framework.
  • Try to understand the SQL queries generated by Active Record module.
  • Go through the Rails Guides. You will find the framework a lot easier.
• Keep practicing.

Few imp points

• It takes years to learn a language completely. So be patient and do not stop learning.
• Go through rails api as when required. [While developing your first app]
• Google the things which you do not understand. People have written great articles on almost all topics.
• Use Stackoverflow :-) [Only when you are not able to find the solution on your own.]
• Load railscasts on your phone or video player. Watch 'em while travelling or in your free time. They are of few minutes each. You will learn a great deal of things and also learn the best way of doing things.

Tools

• Shell [in Mac and Ubuntu]
• Editor [Textmate in Mac, Gedit in Ubuntu and Notepad++ in Windows]
• Firefox with Firebug installed for testing.

Finally I have one thing to say "Keep trying". All the best.

Answer 3

In addition to the great resources that Ceilingfish and Jagira mention, take a look at Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Through the process of building a Rails application, he also shows how to use the basic tool set you'll need (git, various debugging gems, heroku, etc.)