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I've been programming with PHP for awhile as both a professional/hobbyist and would like to learn Ruby as well. I was going to pick up Agile Web Development with Rails and was wondering if there is something I should read first?

I'm pretty much a blank slate with Ruby, I understand the syntax differs from PHP and that's about all I know at this point. In your opinion, does Agile Web Development with Rails cover everything I need to know to get started with design patters, or should I start with something that deals entirely with syntax?

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Requests for learning resources are off topic on Programmers. You should maybe learn the language basics first ("Programming Ruby" better known as "The Pickaxe" is the classical Ruby intro book) and then work through Hartl's Rails tutorial so you know how Rails works. – thorsten müller Mar 27 at 10:38

closed as off topic by jk., gnat, Frank, BЈовић, MichaelT Apr 12 at 6:20

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As mentioned in the comments the "Programming Ruby" is the book most often recommended for learning Ruby. For online resources you can go to Try Ruby website , and Code Academy has a ruby track which will walk you through the basics of ruby. Another site is Ruby Monk, they also have a track for learning about ruby meta programing. For learning rails Hartl's Rails tutorial is in my opinion the best way to learn rails, not only does it cover rails, it also covers other idiomatic ruby concepts testing,rvm,git, and deploying to Heroku.

Once you become more familiar with rails I would definitely check out Railscast. It seems like whenever I want to implement a certain solution in rails, I always search there first and more likely than not I find what I am looking for.

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as of now, your answer is rather hard to read. Would you mind editing it into a better shape? – gnat Mar 27 at 14:18
Yes you where right, hopefully it reads a little better now. – Egryan Mar 27 at 15:29
Thanks Egryan and gnat, I'm going to start with Programming Ruby as that seems to be the general consensus for the total newbie. The other resources you mentioned look great as well. I was hoping to find something that's cut and dried, along the lines of the PHP manual, however I haven't found a "de facto" go to manual to study from yet, does one exist that I'm not aware of? – dcd018 Mar 28 at 6:44
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Not along those lines but if you go here ruby-lang.org/en/documentation it list a whole bunch of other resources that you may or may not find useful. – Egryan Mar 28 at 11:54

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