Starting Ruby on Rails from an Objective-C background

Question

Hi,

Right now I program exclusively with Objective-C using the Cocoa frameworks to write applications for the Mac OS X and iPhone/iPad platforms. I'm fairly fluent using the Objective-C language as well as the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. I also know just enough C to be able to understand ObjC.

One of my projects requires that I write a corresponding web application for use with my iPhone app. I've decided that the best path to go with is Ruby on Rails. What is the easiest transition path to go from Objective-C to Ruby on Rails? Any starter guides/docs/tutorials are appreciated!

Thanks

Answer 1

I think that learning ruby without rails first is a good idea. _why's Poignant Guide to Ruby (http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/) is good for people coming from Objective-C because it doesn't go through how objects send "messages" to each other and all that stuff. After that, you should be able to use the Rails Guides (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/) to learn rails. There are tutorials there. I don't know of any learning material that you have to pay for (like books), though. If that is what you want, I would try searching on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ruby+on+rails&x=0&y=0).

Answer 2

I'm nearing the end of this tutorial myself, and I think it's a perfect resource for those who are already familiar with software development, particularly web application development in general. I come from a Java background, but have dabbled in PHP and Python (specifically, Django). This tutorial has given me tremendous exposure to Rails in a very friendly way.

I still have some unanswered questions, but less than I had when I tried learning from other books.

As a side note, the tutorial briefly discusses learning Ruby first then Rails vs learning Rails first then Ruby (it ultimately suggests Rails first).