Ask HN: What are the best resources about learning Ruby programming in 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the best resources about learning Ruby programming in 2023

19 pointsibobev7 comments

I'm wondering what are the best resources for learning Ruby programming today. The book "The Ruby Programming Language"[1] by the language's author Yukihiro Matsumoto is from 2008 and I suspect that the language has changed a lot since that time. What is the definitive book or online tutorial about modern Ruby nowadays?

Also, is the "Ruby on Rails Tutorial"[2] the definitive book about learning the Rails framework after learning the Ruby language? Could you suggest it or something else?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-Everything-Need/dp/0596516177

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Rails-Tutorial-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/013804984X

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Humble is doing a Ruby/Rails bundle[1] that just started. We used to (maybe still do) source Chris Pine's book in the bundle at The Odin Project[2] when I was there. TOP is a good free curriculum for learning web programming using Ruby.

[1]: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ruby-rails-pragmatic-prog...

[2]: https://www.theodinproject.com

The definitive reference has been the pickAxe book[^1] AFAIK. The ruby 3.x version, which is one who you should be interested in, is not out yet but available for pre-order.

Other than that, here are many great books about ruby and online resources.

[^1]: https://pragprog.com/titles/ruby5/programming-ruby-3-3-5th-e...

My fav pure ruby intermediate book is still Polished Ruby[1] by Jeremy Evans.

Jeremy maintains both Roda and Sequel gems and his advice is very practical IMHO.

It's maybe not the first book you'd want to read but it's full of good ideas for once you've mastered the basics.

1. https://www.packtpub.com/product/polished-ruby-programming/9...

Start here, friend: https://www.railstutorial.org/

It looks like maybe it's paid now, I don't know. Hartl's tutorial was my introduction to ruby, rails, and TDD all in one go. It's a great tutorial, he's a great instructor. I would recommend anyone to start there. If it's paid, in hindsight, I would have paid quite a lot for the tutorial the first round. (Also, maybe you can find an archived version and learn with an older rails, if money is a concern?)

Ruby felt easy for me to pickup. I think Rails was harder to learn than Ruby.

Have fun!

Edit: Also, a bunch of rails nerds were talking in here today, maybe they left some thoughts about how they started: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38248421

https://www.rubykoans.com/ Last time I looked they hadn't been updated in a while, so may not have support for the very latest & greatest features of rubylang, but find this a great approach to quickly familiarizing with 'core' ruby. Hope you enjoy.

The spiritual successor to RailsCasts is worth a look https://gorails.com/

I enjoyed what I read of Ruby Wizardry. It's made for kids, but that didn't really bother me.

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