I am a non-coder and am very good at HTML. I am going to self-teach myself Ruby & Ruby on Rails because I hear it's a good skill to have but especially because it may be an easy first language to learn with my HTML background.
I would like to create my webpage, which will catalog my photographs, using Ruby on Rails. For a non-coder-HTML-user like myself, which would be a smoother transition:
1) Ruby before RoR
OR
2) Learn both at the same time
Thanks!
As you don't know any programming language I think it is better to learn how to program before.
That said you can pick Ruby as a learning programming language. After learning the basics you may learn Ruby on Rails making some web applications.
I was at the same stage 1 month back where you are now.
2 Cases are here:
From learning perspective, definitely Ruby first and then RoR!
If you quickly want to make a web-app (in a rush), then do Rails with basic concept of Ruby (which you will gradually understand both, I know people who directly started with Rails and now they understand Rails and Ruby, both).
What I am doing is, learning Ruby, and for that, I am making a small desktop utility on Ruby and will start with Rails as soon I am "satisfied" with my Ruby desktop app.
If you're totally unfamiliar with object theory, I think you
should learn Rails first through a good tutorial and then, when
you start feeling comfortable with the syntax, you should learn Ruby.
I would recommend that you read the Poignant guide to Ruby.
It's a work of art, both funny and enlightening.
As a programmer myself, I learned Rails before I learned Ruby. RoR makes it so easy to be able to accomplish things without knowing the difference between what is Ruby and what is Rails.
If you read up on Rails and getting started with it, read a few blogs and watch a screencast or three, nothing should stop you from being able to do something useful with the framework.
Unless you're highly curious as to the differences between the two, learn Rails and be happy.
My first instinct is to say learn Ruby first, without doubt. I think any kind of framework is difficult to learn if you don't know 1) the language it uses, or worse 2) any programming language or programming language idioms/grammar/structures/etc.
But reading the comments in this thread, perhaps it's worth trying to learn RoR and Ruby at the same time. If it's too confusing, then pivot and focus on just learning the language first, and RoR later.
Regarding learning the language, while there are lots of Ruby blogs and sites, I think you can learn a language must faster if you work through a single good book first. Why's guide mentioned above is good and fun for experiened programmers, but needs to be supplemented by a real book for someone new to programming.
Good luck!