When I look back to the day I started learning Rails it seems it was more confusing than it should be. Maybe the problem was my approach and anxiety to quickly understand everything. To avoid that you possibly get in the same situation I decided to write something about the steps and resources I’d like to know when I started.
1.Get introduced to Ruby: For this the best resource I got to know so far for someone who already have programming skills is the Ruby appendix of the great Agile Web Development with Rails book by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson. Not too much. Just the basics for you to understand Rails code. You can buy it online here.
2.Setting a Rails Environment: Well … lot’s of options here. My choice is to install NetBeans for Ruby/Rails. It comes bundled with a full Ruby/Rails environment. Of course you can google for options for different IDEs and OSes.
3.First Contact with Rails: An obvious place that I took a while to notice was the Rails Guides. Their introductory chapter entitled Getting Started with Rails is a must read for a quick overview of Rails architecture and features. If you prefer, the chapters 5 to 13 of the book will work too (I went this way but wouldn’t again).
4.Getting Deeper: My suggestion here is for you to find something to code that you really need. You’ll probably find yourself in trouble and almost everything you’ll need is at Rails Guides topics and the Rails API. Another priceless resource is the community itself. I like to get to them through the #rubyonrails IRC channel on Freenode.
5. Understanding the Rails way: something I noticed about Rails is that almost all the time there is a right way of doing what you want. And it’ll be simple. But it might be difficult to realize it by yourself if you come from another language/framework with distinct paradigms. Somewhere you can find a lot on the right way of doing things with Rails is the fantastic Rails Casts by Ryan Bates.
A general advice would be to read much more than code for a couple of weeks untill you got familiar with Rails. And never forget of you’re good friend Google. Rails has an awesome community who loves to share knowledge. It’s spread everywhere.
If you have any suggestion to this minimal guide do not hesitate to suggest it. In a future post I’ll write something about the gems and plugins I like to use.
Cheers!
