Top 6 Resources To Learn Ruby On Rails

In a previous post, we discussed why we are using Ruby On Rails to develop ProductCritic. We're not saying it's the best framework since sliced bread (nothing ever is) but it's fairly easy to learn if you're interested.

With Rail's growing user base, the resources for learning the framework are certainly growing. The following resources are what I am currently considering the best locations of information.

1) Free Original Screencasts

Three free movies that give a great overview and show what the framework can do. Watch them through at full speed to be entertained but then go through them and follow along with your own editor to rebuild the applications yourself.

2) Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition

When just starting out I found it useful to have the print book but it's also available in PDF as well. This book brings together all the components in building an application is really worth the money. It's been recently revised for 1.2 so it should have a reasonable shelf life.

3) The Ruby Way, 2nd Edition

This book provides a huge number of Ruby idioms and examples that I find really useful for learning the "ruby way" of completing tasks. I came from a C++/C# background and found a number of ruby semantics a bit strange at first, specifically blocks. Since the Ruby language allows for completing tasks in any number of ways I like this book to see what the current accepted methods are for certain tasks.

4) Jamis Buck's Blog

Jamis Buck is a core contributor to Rails and employee of 37signals. Out of all the blogs on the net about technical aspects of Rails I find his writing the most interesting and easiest to understand. He is also quite prolific churning out good content at regular intervals.

He also created the Capistrano deployment tool and provides a lot of insight into the tool and deployment in general which is useful.

5) PeepCode Screencasts

These screencasts are very high quality at a very good price. It's like having a veteran rails developer mentor you on a topic that would be rather hard to document in a book. I found the RESTful Rails and Test-First Development for Rails the ones the most useful so far but all of them have been very useful.

6) Programming Ruby, 2nd Edition

Known as the "Pick Axe" because of the cover image this is a great resource and reference for the Ruby Language. I find the Ruby Way more useful for learning how to do a specific task but if I want to understand all the details of the language I refer to this book.

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