Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is a classic. It’s done in an the format of a graphic novel and contains a lot of fun and interesting material. It was done by Why the Lucky Stiff, a cult figure in the ruby community that you should know about.

Rails for Zombies by EnvyLabs

A fun and entertaining guide to ruby on rails. Be careful, you may find yourself craving brains and entrails for lunch if you finish this one — though your rails skills will be better off for the effort.

Try Ruby!

An easy to use place to begin learning about Ruby (Not so much about rails, tho). It’s a great place to start if you are literally starting from scratch.

Ruby on Rails Tutorial

This is a non-free resource, but is well done and may be worth investing in if you are serious about learning the material. Highly recommended.

Ruby Koans

Ruby Koans is an interesting and insightful set of lessons on Ruby (not rails) that focuses on teaching through a set of unit tests. One of it’s strengths is that it introduces you immediately to the value and practice of unit testing — a critical skill and a core value of the ruby community.

The Rails API Docs

If you’re going to be a rails programmer, you need to have this url handy. Have a question on the :belongs_to statement? Want to understand the call-back lifecycle for active record model classes? It’s all here. Not for beginners, but definitely required before you’re ready to call yourself a master.

Railscasts

On of the best and one of my favorite resources on rails. Railscasts are an important resource for the entire rails community. They are a series of free — and very useful — videos on various topics in rails development, complete with source code. Want to know about Ajax calls? Want to understand the latest in authentication libraries? It’s all here.

RailsBridge

RailsBridge is an effort to build community around helping people learn rails. It’s people helping people. You can find a mentor there, get involved with something in your community, learn by volunteering time to a non-profit. It’s a valuable resource.

RubyLearning

Ruby Learning is a site put together by Satish Talim, a senior software consultant based in Pune, India. He’s done a thorough job of providing lessons on many aspects of the ruby language. The site is a bit over-done with adsense and other advertising, but there’s a lot of meat there too.

Peepcode Screencasts

Peepcode Screencasts are another well-known resource in the rails community. Similar to Railscasts, they publish a regular series of videos on different aspects of rails development. The screencasts aren’t free, but considering the time they could save you they could be a great investment in terms of getting you up to speed fast. They’re widely known and recommended.

Personally, given the software that comes included on it, I think that it’s probably not much — if any — more expensive at all.

But none-the-less, I wrote out some of the reasons I like it — and why I wouldn’t switch back for anything.

• I never worry about viruses. Never. I don’t have to install firewall/virus scan software. Ever.
• I get a true bash shell when I go to the OS. One of my biggest complaints about windows was that it seemed designed to keep you from going to the OS to do things. My mac works seamlessly that way.
• I don’t have some stupid ‘start’ menu that I have to rearrange to get the programs I want lined up.
• I rarely have to reboot when I install something. I reboot the machine so infrequently that sometimes it’s months between reboots. I’ve never had a ‘blue screen of death’ and my computers have locked up maybe once or twice a year.
• My system backups are seamless through the Time Machine built into Leopard. I just works and I always have a current backup. Always.
• When there’s an operating system upgrade, I always look forward to it.
• The included software, iLife, is great.
• I play guitar some and use the included, free program Garage Band to record songs I write.

And these are just a few reasons off the top of my head.

Now – maybe it’s worth saving a few bucks to have an OS that sucks.

But on the other hand, I don’t buy the cheapest tools at Home Depot either. And I didn’t get the cheapest TV available. Or the lowest cost stereo system.

Sometimes I pay a bit more at the market so I don’t have to eat the cheapest cuts of meat. I don’t buy the nasty cheap white bread either.

And don’t even talk to me about beer. Forcing me to buy the cheapest beer at the market would suck – but if you prefer that I don’t judge you.

I don’t mind paying a bit more for quality. And my mac is simply higher quality in ways that are important to me.