The Ruby Way

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The "best way" depends on your current skills, really. Ordered by increasing levels of programming skill, I'd say you should start with one of the following: 1. Learn to Program by Chris Pine 2. Everyday Scripting with Ruby by Brian Marick 3. Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt An excellent book to build your skills and internalize the common Ruby idioms is The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. As others have mentioned, Agile Web Development with Rails is The Book to use for learning Rails. Of the above, the only book I don't have in one form or another is Chris Pine's (because it is, frankly, well below my skill level). There's an online tutorial by the same name, by the same guy, that can perhaps serve as a substitute -- but the book is much more complete, so if that's suitable to your skill level, I…

Poignant is fun . That's all. Probably the best book for really learning Ruby is The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. Hal clearly gets Ruby. The book is thorough (although possibly a little out of date now), introduces a lot of idiomatic Ruby, and has just the right amount of geeky inside jokes.

Ask HN: The best PHP book for Ruby programmer? I need to learn some PHP after several years of serious hacking in Ruby. Of all Ruby books I've read "The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton was the most practical and fun to follow. For example, while telling you about basic data structures it would also give you a recipe for implementing a sparse matrix or how to use arrays as mathematical sets. What is the best book that focuses on PHP as a programming language, rather than on building websites?

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby: http://poignantguide.net/ This is good for your first steps. Then check out The Ruby Way to dig in deeper: http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Way-Second-Addison-Wesley-Profess...

I'm quite fond of http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Way-Second-Addison-Wesley-Profess... while there are some people who love the pickaxe book (first edition is free on http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby )..and others. As for free guides, I love pointing people to http://poignantguide.net/ruby/

Hmmm... my own list of memorable programming books would look like (in no specific order): 1. The Mythical Man Month, Brooks 2. Peopleware, DeMarco and Lister 3. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Norvig 4. The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie 5. The Ruby Way, Fulton I had a hard time deciding whether or not to include the Pragmatic Programmer, in the end I decided to go with The Ruby Way because it was an unusually enjoyable read for a language book. I know the original list was supposed to be more esoteric books, not classics, but I'm anticipating this becoming a thread of everyone's favorites. : ))

… Rails is currently the way to go. It's much more mature than Django and has more flexibility and more mature gems/plugins. Lynda tutorials are great. I'd also recommend free ones: http://railscasts.com/ http://www.akitaonrails.com/2008/2/1/rolling-with-rails-2-0-... And for-pay ones at http://www.peepcode.com Also, grab "The Rails Way" book by Obie Fernandez (it's THE BEST book on Rails.. when you learn the basics, it's better than 'Agile Web Development with Rails') and "The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton.

Chatting with Hal Fulton (The Ruby Way, author) A great interview with Hal Fulton, the author of "The Ruby Way" book. http://www.akitaonrails.com/2008/1/9/chatting-with-hal-fulton

… It's available as a pdf direct from the Pragmatic Programmers -. Skip the Pickaxe book for now, the 1st edition is online at http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ 2. Black's Ruby for Rails (Manning). Read this not long after AWDwR. It provides much insight into the Ruby behind the Rails. 3 (tie). Either Orsini's Rails Cookbook (O'Reilly) (the testing chapter is particularly useful if it's new to you) 3 (tie). Fowler's Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers). Both books are very good. If anything, 'Recipes' gets you movign faster, but you'll probably learn more from the Cookbook. opt. Ajax on Rails by Raymond (O'Reilly). An in Depth Reference to Prototype, Scriptaculus and rjs. Useful since there is no really good reference on these for the noob. opt. The Ruby Way by Fulton (Addison Wesley) An 'inside out' Ruby reference. Instead of going throug…