Ruby on Rails users..please help..

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maw

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 27, 2000
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can anyone recommend the best way to get started with RoR? I keep reading how great it is and how easy it is to learn, but for some reason I feel totally overwhelmed. I think I'm not starting off in the right place.

Can someone recommend a good book to start off with?

I have a book that was highly recommended "Agile Web Development with Rails", but I get the feeling from going through the demo app that they are assuming I already know Ruby. It seems to delve right into the syntax of the language and I simply cannot follow what they are doing. I got RoR installed and am going through the demo, but I feel like all I'm doing to retyping stuff I see in the book, it doesn't seem to tell me what any of the language syntax means or why I would need to use it.

I would really like to know how you first got started with RoR..
 
I picked up Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide by Dave Thomas when I picked up Agile Web Development with Rails. I've been going through that to learn about Ruby before diving more into RoR.

I think you can find the 1st revision on the book for free on the web.
 
maw said:
I have a book that was highly recommended "Agile Web Development with Rails", but I get the feeling from going through the demo app that they are assuming I already know Ruby. It seems to delve right into the syntax of the language and I simply cannot follow what they are doing. I got RoR installed and am going through the demo, but I feel like all I'm doing to retyping stuff I see in the book, it doesn't seem to tell me what any of the language syntax means or why I would need to use it.
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Ummmm....I'd recommend that you take a look in the appendices of that book of yours. Particularly the section entitled "Introduction to Ruby" ;)

I found that book an absolute treasure trove of useful code, and the beta releases of the book often have new information on Rails before even the Rails website is updated.
 
The best way is to go to http://www.rubyonrails.org and watch the webcasts. Buy the Agile Web Development with Rails (wait for version 2 since it's right around the corner) book along with Programming Ruby ("pickaxe book"). The latter is the bible unless you grok Japanese.

Read the Ruby book if you don't know Ruby then read the Agile book cover to cover. Seriously. DO NOT SKIP ANYTHING.

Get on IRC, irc.freenode.net in #rubyonrails (say hi to me, "lisa") and intelligently ask questions.
 
I picked up Agile Web Development with Rails without learning ruby. as long as you read the appendix and such yuo should have enough to get you started. but yes, you should probably learn ruby first before you dive right into rails.
 
OK, thanks for the tips everyone. I'm a bit embarassed that i didn't think of carefully poking through the appendix. I've also found the Ruby programming book on the web, and that has helped tremendously. Now i feel like i'm heading in the right direction. after only a couple hours of studying Ruby code, the demo is starting to make a lot more sense now. :)
 
maw said:
OK, thanks for the tips everyone. I'm a bit embarassed that i didn't think of carefully poking through the appendix. I've also found the Ruby programming book on the web, and that has helped tremendously. Now i feel like i'm heading in the right direction. after only a couple hours of studying Ruby code, the demo is starting to make a lot more sense now. :)
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It needs pointing out that the online Ruby book is obsolete. Ruby 1.8.x changed the way some things work.
 
doh said:
It needs pointing out that the online Ruby book is obsolete. Ruby 1.8.x changed the way some things work.
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ok thanks for letting me know. i'm at least getting a good grasp of the syntax though. i'll pick up the latest edition in hardcopy this weekend.
 
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