Ask HN: Which Ruby on Rails Book?

6 points by milestinsley 16 years ago | 5 comments

Obviously there are great online resources, but I'd like to crack the spine and smell the pages of an actual book.

-I'm new to Ruby, but a fast learner.

-I've had enough of PHP.

-I understand object orientated coding and MVC design principles.

-I want something that gets me up to speed on the idiosyncrasies of Ruby and the Rails framework.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)

Edit: Formatting

terrellm 16 years ago |

Last Fall I bought Agile Web Development with Rails (http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with...) and found it to be very helpful in transitioning from .Net to Rails. Based on how you describe your experience, you would do fine with this book.

There are a few more basic books, however, I didn't want to read 500 pages just to learn how to build a blog.

I also recommend watching some of the Peep Code videos as they go more into depth on specific topics.

milestinsley 16 years ago | |

Thanks. This looks great. It's exactly the sort of thing I am looking for as I too don't want waste time re-learning the basics!

awa 16 years ago |

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/55574/learning-ruby-on-ra...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83784/rails-books

scorchin 16 years ago |

In all honesty, read through _why's (poignant) guide to ruby first to understand the basics of Ruby and read some cool comics along the way.

Once you're happy you've got a good footing in Ruby (will only take an afternoon+evening to read and try the examples) you can go for one of the many "Rails" books that are likely to be recommended here.

http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

Crunchy Bacon!

milestinsley 16 years ago | |

This guide is excellent. Reading it now!

Thanks for the tip!