This is a question I get quite a lot.

Where should I start? What should I do? What can I do to become a better Ruby/Rails developer etc.. (more common questions)

I wish there was a “simple/right” answer to these questions. Something like: “Read this book and you will become an awesome developer”. Unfortunately, things are not that simple. We are all different and we learn differently, we also come from different backgrounds.

So instead of telling you what I think is the best way to learn, I decided to ask the community. Here is a quick compilation of some of the responses I received:

What the community says:

How did you learn Ruby and/or Rails?

• DHH: I learned Ruby by programming in anger. Attempting to make something real. Not just a toy program.
• David Black: I learned ruby via pickaxe and lots of practice and both reading and answering questions on ruby-talk.
• Evan Phoenix: reading code WHILE writing code
• Yehuda Katz: I tried impossibly hard things to force myself to learn.
• Laurent Sansonetti: I learned ruby via pickaxe, reading the posts on ruby-talk and then reading MRI’s source code
• Ninh Bui: I was quite a java fanboy back, writing struts + j2ee enterprise apps, Hongli forced me to look at Ruby over a weekend and I learned the Ruby basics. I then learned Rails by googling, reading books and source code.
• Tim Connor: the rails community habit of obsessively blogging was probably the biggest help
• Lar Van Der Jagt: Ryan Bates’ railscasts for sure. The Rails Way once I knew enough to dig deeper. What I wish I’d done tho is work with experts!
• Arun Gupta: The Rails guides and Agile Development with Rails book.
• Geoffrey Grosenbach: After I had read a few tutorials, I started by spending a few hours reading through the API docs. Even if you don’t understand everything, it’s a fantastic way to become familiar with what’s available.
• Nate Todd: I learned MVC with a few CakePHP apps first. It helped me learn best practices in a language I was familiar with.
• Chris Wanstrath: I learned Ruby on Rails by writing apps and reading the framework’s source.

What advice would you give?

• Bob Martens: Get involved in the community in some way. They know more than you. ;)
• Ismael Celis: understanding the relationship between the parts of MVC. Loads of people coming to Rails don’t know what a design pattern is.
• @jeromegn: I find the best trick to learn RoR is to simply try building something. Rails docs and learning Ruby in parallel helped me the most
• @johnbender: knowing why instance vars are available in templates, etc. Essentially knowing the basics of ruby would be my initial advice
• @ryandotsmith: writers read. Find popular projects on github (i.e. radiant ) and study their specs.
• Sunil Karkera: understanding MVC in Rails was the most important thing for me when I started.
• Luke Burton: basic screencasts showing something impressive being achieved in small amounts of code were a great start
• DHH: Pick a real project and program in anger. That’s how I’d recommend learning any language including Rails and Ruby.
• Anthony Green: Accept that there’s a Rails Way and you need to learn it. What helped me most ? - the community.
• Kent Fenwick: Learn by doing a REAL project. Pick something you want to build and slowly chip away at it.
• Trevor Turk: learn by reading and writing code… meaning you should try to build something you want instead of dumbly following tutorials…
• Ryan Bates: Rails is made up of many technologies (HTML, CSS, Ruby, OOP, SQL, etc.). If you’re struggling with Rails, focus on weakest part.
• Geoffrey Grosenbach: And there are many examples throughout that will help a new developer get a feel for the philosophy of Rails. Many people have learned from the Rails from Scratch series at PeepCode
• @eifon: A good grasp of MVC is invaluable as is knowing some Ruby before you start.
• John Yerhot: don’t be afraid to ask questions and use support channels - irc, mail list, rails bridge, etc…
• Roy Wright: use the same version of rails as is in the book you are using.
• @brianthecoder: read other people’s code
• Ninh Bui: I learned by having discussions with a lot of people, I can definitely recommend that
• Chris Wanstrath: Stop asking other people for advice and start coding something.

Different opinions but very interesting answers. I tried to compile some of what I thought were great resources that helped me and/or other people I talked to.

Never heard of Rails or Ruby, what is it?

Start by watching one of the many screencasts/presentations about Rails. Rails and software developed using Rails are written in a programming language called Ruby. If you are new to software developer, you can quickly learn Ruby and I would recommend a great book called Learn to program by Chris Pine. Ruby is a very elegant and intuitive language that you will be able to pick up quickly while learning new tricks for many years. However, don’t expect that after installing Rails, you will have a Drupal clone in Ruby. Rails is a web framework, in other words, a tool to help you write your own web application quickly and efficiently.

Tip: The Ruby website has a lot of information and resource to get started.

I hacked some PHP/Perl/ scripts but I don’t know anything about MVC or Object Oriented development:</h4>

Here it really depends on how you learn things. Are you a “How” or a “Why” person? A “How” person will learn by being shown how to do something and will then reproduce it and learn from it. A “Why” person needs to understand why things are done a certain way so they can re apply their knowledge on other challenges.

The good news is that Rails uses many conventions and if you pick them up, you will quickly get things done and feel rewarded by what you have done. That’s great for “How” people, but “Why” people might have to be a bit more patient and start playing with the framework before that can fully understand everything.

“How” people should definitely watch Ryan Bates’ excellent railscasts and read the Rails guides “Why” people might want to read Ruby Programming Language and The Well-Grounded Rubyist, aka Ruby for Rails 2nd edition

You should also check the Rails wiki and contribute info that might be potentially missing. (If you have a problem that is not covered/discussed in the wiki, try to solve it and then post your solution. If you come across the same problem at a later time, you will be able to quickly find how you solved it. By contributing, you will also save other developers’ time.)

Start reading Ruby/Rails related blogs, subscribe to rubyinside RSS feed and visit your local Ruby group.

Tip: Start a blog and keep track of what you learned. That will help you and other people facing the same challenges

I started writing a Rails app but I feel limited by my knowledge of the framework and the language

That’s a normal stage, don’t give up! Here are a couple of great reads: The Ruby Way and The Rails Way. the Ruby Way should satisfy primarily the “why” people, while the Rails way should primarily please the “how” people. I’d recommend to read both. Don’t hesitate to ask questions, check google, use twitter, blog comments, mailing lists. Try to find some local rubyists to share knowledge with. Pick a topic you would like to know better and prepare a talk for your friends/local Ruby group or write a blog post about it. One thing for sure, don’t be ashamed or discouraged. Persevere, it’s worth it (or get out, relax for a while, and then come back and give it another go).

A good way to improve your Ruby/Rails skills is to look at other people’s code. Check GitHub and see how people have solved the same problems you are facing. You can also attend a Ruby/Rails training, a lot of companies offer classes around the world. RailsBridge is trying to reach out to people aspiring to become better developer, check their site.

Tip: I often use apiDock when I’m looking for documentation on a method/class.

I wrote a Rails app, I adopted and understood the Rails conventions and I feel comfortable writing new apps.

Congratulations, you should be proud of what you have accomplished! But don’t stop learning! Did you write tests for your application? Do your tests really test your application, or are they just there to make you feel better (i.e: change your code, are your tests still passing? they shouldn’t)? Do you use plugins? Did you look at their code? Do you understand how they work? Could you write your own plugin? What about a Ruby gem? Also, how are your javascript skills? What about CSS and DBA stuff? focus on your weaknesses.

I would strongly suggest contributing code at this point. Contribute a patch to one of the many GitHub projects, or even Rails, you will learn a lot!

Tip: Check out Gregg Pollack’s Scaling Rails series

I wrote a couple of Rails app, I even wrote a plugin/gem.

That’s great, by now you probably are very familiar with Rails and Ruby. You might want to dive in a bit deeper. Maybe check how to wisely use metaprogramming and/or check on how to write C/FFI extensions. Why not look at Ruby’s source code to learn how things really work?

It’s also probably a good time for you to start learning new languages to see how other communities do things. Look at other frameworks and try to understand how and why people chose other conventions/ways. Play with Python, Java, Scala, Clojure, Objective-C, Ocaml, Scheme or whatever language sounds interesting to you. You don’t have to master other languages, but you should try to understand the reasoning behind each approach and understand the pros/cons. It will honestly help your Ruby skills and broaden your horizons.

Tip: Prepare a couple of talks and send proposals to various conferences. (Don’t limit yourself to Ruby conferences)

I know Ruby and Rails like nobody else, I could even quote Rails and MRI’s source code by heart. (just ask a LOC)

Then I hope you are helping with the Ruby 1.9 efforts, contributing code to other implementations (IronRuby, JRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius) and helping with Rails 3 :)

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If you are reading this post, you are probably in one of the above categories. Pairing and tutoring are great ways to learn, it’s all about karma. Helping others will help you becoming a better developer. Feel free to leave advise, links and info in the comments.