From: Rupert Voelcker <rupert@...>
Date: 2008-11-08T05:18:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Rails book wanted for non Ruby programmer

2008/11/7 Aaron Gray <ang.usenet@gmail.com>:
> Yeah, I really would prefer a) a book that is not tainted by PHP references
> (should have said) b) is recomended by a reader.

I started off with the Pragmatic Programmers "Agile Web Development
with Rails".  It goes through the building of a sample application and
has a pretty good reference section in it too. (I've not tried any
other rails starter books so can't offer any comparisons)

Although I do agree with Michael in that learning ruby is a good idea
first, if you have good programming experience and aren't wanting to
build a complex site to start off with then you can get away with not
worrying too much about learning ruby first.  However, your code is
not likely to be particularly great - it's likely to be more like php
written in a ruby syntax rather than nicely honed ruby.  If you're not
too concerned about this and happy to learn to improve your ruby as
you go along then I'd say dive in.  But to understand what the
framework is doing or to write decent code for your app then learning
ruby itself is essential.  Be prepared to have to do a major re-write
of any site you've developed pre-learning-ruby once you've started to
understand it better.

I (and I imagine many others) started by playing with rails, then fell
in love with ruby, then started on the path towards ruby
enlightenment.

Hope this helps

Rupert