Ruby Programming: Beginner's Guide [2018 update]

Kolosek -

We are writing this brief tutorial on how to easily get into Ruby programming language and Ruby on Rails framework so our community can grow with new developers.

First things first. Ruby on Rails framework is based on Ruby programming language, and the learning should start from learning Ruby.

Before we start digging into Ruby programming language, let's first set up our environment.

Ubuntu installation instructions

We choose to develop on Linux OS, Ubuntu distribution. In order to install Ruby and Ruby and Rails, you could follow these instructions (it might not always be up-to-date)

If you find some of the steps are out of date, please submit change request, so we can keep it up-to-date.

Digging into Ruby

We will list tutorials that cover basics, intermediate and advanced parts of getting into Ruby. If you want to learn Rails, it would be best to go through each step, but it's not mandatory. Going through Intermediate should be enough for you to get started.

  1. Beginner: For starters of getting into ruby programming language we recommend going through interactive tutorial, which might take you few hours, but it's worth it.

    https://www.codecademy.com/learn/ruby

  2. Intermediate: An alternative is to go through not an interactive tutorial, we think you are a faster learner through that means.

    http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/projects/ruby_in_100_minutes.html

  3. Advanced: Most of the things you need in every day Ruby have been covered. To get a more advanced view on language please finish the course:

    http://rubymonk.com/learning/books/1-ruby-primer

  4. You want to master Ruby, take a look at this style guide:

    Ruby style guide

Learning theory first

Keep in mind that you still have very useful information in documentation. We know you might be thinking 'yeah, right, documentation is boring'. But when you learn about Strings, Intergers, Array and Hash etc. it is very useful to know what methods you have to manipulate them.

Don't be the person who re-implements substracting of String, only because you didn't know that method already exists in Ruby.

Once you mastered Ruby, you are ready to go one step further and start building your first web application. Look for our Ruby on Rails tutorial to start with your first Rails web app.