The best resources for learning Ruby and Rails in 2011

Posted by Marc Chung Posted on 2011-06-13 in Learning | 0 comments

So you want to dive into Ruby and Ruby on Rails? Perhaps you've got plenty of experience with Java, .NET, or Django, but you're still hungry to learn and you're fascinated with what you've been reading about Ruby and Rails.  Great. 

Since there isn't a one stop guide for everything on Rails, I decided to put together a quick list of links to books, tutorials, podcasts, screencasts, and hosting services. 

Mastery is a journey, and this post will help you get there.

Buy a few good books:

• Agile Web Development with Rails
• Crafting Rails Applications
• The Rails 3 Way

Stay updated with podcasts or videos:

• Rubyology
• RailsCasts
• Ruby5
• PeepCode

Walkthrough a Rails tutorial:

• Rails Tutorial
• AsciiCasts

Follow the latest Ruby news:

• Ruby Inside
• Ruby Flow
• Ruby Weekly (newsletter)

Get started on Windows:

• Ruby in Steel, a Visual Studios IDE
• RubyMine, standalone IDE from JetBrains
• Ruby Installer
• Rails Installer

Explore the Ruby and Rails software ecosystem:

• Popular Ruby projects on GitHub
• An excellent collection of Rails 3 compatible gems
• The Ruby Toolbox, a curated list of RubyGems

Version control services

• GitHub
• Assembla
• Gitorious

Rails hosting services:

• BlueBox Group
• Heroku
• Rails Machine
• Engine Yard

My favorite Ruby software

• Bundler, for managing libraries and their dependencies
• RVM, for managing multiple version of Ruby on your machine
• Apache Passenger for Rails, for running Rails on Apache
• RefineryCMS, Ruby on Rails CMS
• Ruby on Rails source code
• Rubygems.org source code
• Jekyll source code, static site generator

Don't see your favorite place to learn Ruby? Add it to the comments below.

You can follow me on GitHub.