a small collection of what is worth a read to get into Ruby itself

My online search for a barebone Rails social networks framework respectively for tools necessary to develop one yourself, I naturally came across several useful links on Ruby and/or Rails. As Rails has the longer list and I am short in time, I begin by doing the Ruby share first, and there with my suggestions on what’s worth a read to get into Ruby.

To get into Ruby, having not the least clue of the issue, originally I bought some Ruby on Rails book, hoping it would set up me in both of the subjects. Being common in Rails tutorials, the book focused on developing a single project — which actually was not very amazing to me. Plus the issue, me having not the least background knowledge on neither Ruby nor Rails, they derailed me just after the first fifteen pages. Somewhere there were some notions without explanation I simply did not know. So, I put the book aside an re-researched a Ruby introduction on the web.

What I came up with, finally, was Brian Schröder’s slides [PDF] collection of a summer campus workshop he gave in 2005. Apparently he’s very good in selecting examples that let you see what he wants to show you. His examples are mostly immediately clear. Aside of the examples, there’s little text or introduction, but his slides — that was which did the trick for me. That was spring 2006. Into Rails I went only at the end of 2007.

Additionally, there is one famous book on Ruby, the so-called Pickaxe Book which, like Perl’s Camel Book, is called like this because there is a pickaxe on the front cover of the book. Actually, the pickaxe book is considered to be the Ruby book. Fortunately for you, it’s freely available online. If you want to get a dead tree media version of the book, considere asking the bookseller for the “Learning Ruby” book, which is its real name.

Finally, if you already decided to get into a Ruby project but got stuck, the Ruby mailing list might be the right place for you ask your questions (and actually get them answered too). However, be warned that there might be tons of traffic on that very list. I read about something of hundreds of mails every day compared to dozens of other popular programming languages.