What's the best resource for learning Rails for a raw beginner?

Question

I want to tell someone what to look at to learn Ruby and Rails. He knows PHP and is a smart guy.

For Ruby, I recommended David Black's Ruby for Rails, warning him that the Rails chapters are outdated.

What do I recommend for Rails?

Perhaps the "beta book" version of AWDR, third edition? I'm wondering whether it's close to being a complete and coherent book, or if there are still a lot of blank areas.

What's the best resource for someone starting from zero after they've gotten some comfort with Ruby?

Answer 1

I've been playing around with these set of Ruby Koans from EdgeCase.

They supplement some of the more traditional learning resources nicely if you're in the mind set to do some TDD.

Answer 2

I've been teaching myself using Railscasts. I really like his screencast. They cover a wide variety of subjects, are short, and are easy to follow.

I also use the beta third edition of AWDWR. If you buy the beta version, you can "update" your copy as they do.

Answer 3

The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

this is the book you want, explains what you need to know in depth. about $30 at amazon.... will save you tonnes of time jumping around tonnes of sites.

Answer 4

I highly recommend Rails For PHP Developers. Provides side-by-side PHP/Ruby code and is overall a great introduction to Ruby. Following this you might suggest one of the more advanced Pragmatic books, Agile Web Development With Rails.

Answer 5

I recommend reading the official Ruby on Rails Getting Started guide.

October 2010 update: I'm also writing a book called Rails 3 in Action with Yehuda Katz. However, before your friend dives into Rails I would recommend that he reads The Well-Grounded Rubyist by David A. Black first to learn about Ruby, and then Rails 3 in Action to learn about Rails.

Answer 6

My book recommendation for rails is "Agile Web Development with Rails" (Pragmatic Programmers) written by David Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of rails). This book tells you all the things that you will need to know when you are starting to write rails applications. But beware the second edition of this book is the current edition, but in the middle of march the third edition will be released. Perhaps it will be wise to wait for this edition, because the second edition is a little bit outdated (it covers the rails version 1.2.3, the current rails version is 2.3). But on the website of the pragmatic programmers (pragprog.com) you can buy a beta version as a pdf of the third edition if you wish to get it as early as possible.

Answer 7

The beta book of AWDR is complete, in fact I think it's going to press soon. I bought the PDF a couple months back and even then it was very close to complete.

I would highly recommend the PeepCode screencasts. He has some excellent material and all very well produced.

Answer 8

Someone already mentioned "Agile web development with rails" and that a new version is coming out soon, but you can actually buy the Beta-PDF now and start using it. I have it and it's really useful. There is a new version every few weeks that you can just download. It is up to date with the latest release version of Rails as well. I think it is by far the best way to get started because it is well written and up to date. Here is a link: Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition

Answer 9

I cannot recommend enough "Simply Rails 2" (http://sitepoint.com/books/rails2). This is how I got started (actually it was the first edition of the book), and love the approach of the book and how the author presents everything. The book explains many of the basics of ruby and rails, and then goes through building a simple "Digg" clone, complete with ajax and I think an API.

At the time I was still evaluating Rails as a possible direction I wanted to go, and this book not only got me going in the right direction, but it also showed me the tremendous power of the framework and I could see how much time I was gonna save by learning it fully.

Answer 10

Learning Rails Podcasts. There are 23 of them to date; the first 8 are audio only and the remainder are screencasts. Michael Slater and Chris Haupt are both Rails "converts" that take you from square zero covering the essence of MVC into more advanced concepts such as Web Services. You can subscribe to get an email for these, as they are adding new episodes each week.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't ditto the nod to Pragmatic Rubyist Dave Thomas' Agile Development With Rails (Skateboard Book).

Answer 11

Sam Ruby is still working on the latest edition of AWDWR. The beta book should be decent, the but the current speed of Rails development means most anything will be slightly out of date right now. That's not going to be too important for an absolute beginner, but always be sure to check which version of Rails any documentation is referring to as the subtle (or sometimes large) differences can trip you up.

In addition to AWDWR, I recommend going through the book RailsSpace since it takes the reader step by step through creating a full Rails application. You can then add on a reference book like The Rails Way. Once you're familiar with the basics of Rails, you'll find the official Rails API to be indispensable. To keep up with the latest changes in Rails, you should subscribe to Ryan's weblog and the official Rails weblog.

That's the basics. There are many, many other resources. In fact, one the challenges of learning Rails is that the documents is a bit, well, distributed around the internet. Many of the tutorials and interesting ticks to Rails have been written up in hundreds of different blog posts. In this case, Google is your friend, but again beware which version of Rails any particular post is referring to. Some supplemental reading includes:

• The Rails Wiki which is notoriously disorganized and often outdated, but there are some efforts to clean it up.
• Railscasts for Rails screencasts
• Ruby on Rails Podcast, the official one, plus the Rails Envy podcast
• Rails Inside for general Rails news, though I prefer
• Ruby Inside for all things Ruby
• David's own blog is useful as well as Jamis Buck's blog and Geoffrey Grosenbach's.

In fact there are dozens of good Rails blogs. Note the ones you find in Google searches and good luck!

Answer 12

I have to highly recommend the book RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails. It assumes no Rails or Ruby experience and takes you through building a production site. It is comprehensive and in depth and shows how you would actually refactor your code if you were doing it yourself. I also found it to be a very interesting read and it's one of the programming books I truly enjoyed reading.

I always find that practical examples are way more effective to learn from than reference books. I also own Agile Web Development with Rails: Second Edition which is an excellent reference.

Answer 13

I would stay far away from RailsSpace.

If you're already proficient in Ruby, I would highly recommend The Rails Way. The current edition is a little behind the latest release, but it goes a long way in giving you a firm understanding of "the magic" that takes place beneath the abstraction - especially useful if you're looking to become a Rails guru. If you just want to start hacking, I'd recommend Agile Web Development with Rails.

Answer 14

I really like the videos from Lynda.com, the Ruby on Rails training videos were broken up nicely and were quick and easy to learn.

Answer 15

Railscasts.com has already been mentioned are fantastic. Another great screencast resource is Peepcode.com, they aren't free, but are will worth the $9 per screencast, saved me tons of time when learning some stuff.