Getting started with Ruby on Rails

Yes, it has been a while since I wrote my last post on this blog. It seems there is always something keeping me away from sitting down and writing something useful. At the moment, this reason is Ruby on Rails. Over the last 2 years I got more and more frustrated with my inability to implement my own ideas due to a lack of profound knowledge of programming languages like PHP or Ruby. All my professional life I’ve been very design/usability centered and I don’t want to change that, but I want to add some knowledge “from the other side” to my portfolio. That’s why I started to learn Ruby on Rails. Long story short, I wanted to share some links with you which should get you started with Ruby and the framework Rails.

Where to get it

http://rubyonrails.org

Books

Agile webdevelopment with Ruby on Rails - This is a great book to get you started with RoR. Buy it and you won’t regret it. Although I’m not a big fan of books when it comes to teaching yourself something, this book really helped me to get started. Now I’m using it as a reference while I try out tutorials on the web.

Screencasts

http://railscasts.com - Great screencasts, although you need some knowledge about RoR to understand what he is talking about. If you have never programmed in your life, read a book first!

http://peepcode.com - Another great source for screencasts if you are willing to pay for it. I think they cost about 9USD and in my opinion, they are worth their money.

Tutorials

Nettuts - Starting with Ruby on Rails from scratch - Week 1 to 4 - This was the tutorial that got me interested in RoR, but I never actually tried it. It is build on  an older Rails version which doesn’t really matter, so try it out.

Getting started with Ruby on Rails - If you read my blog, you know that I love Smashingmagazine.com. They have released a two-part article about ruby, explaining why it is so good and how it works. Read it! :)

This is a really short list and there are many many more tutorials out there. Start with those mentioned above and use google to find other resources. Have fun!

A holistic approach – why designers should know about coding

Lukas Mathis over at IgnoreTheCode.net wrote a great article in which he pointed out some really good arguments which stand against the sentiment that webdesigners should know how to write code. His basic statement is that knowing what is possible in a certain programming language will restrain your creativity when it comes to developing the best possible solution for a design.

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Webdevelopment for Beginners – XHTML and CSS

Recently I decided to start learning more about webdevelopment, since fronend coders are hard to find at the moment. I started looking for some good tutorials that should help me to get an overview over this topic. Start off with XHTML/CSS, followed by JavaScript and finally RubyOnRails - sounded like a good plan. Well, it turned out to be much harder to find some good tutorials that would help a novice with his first steps, especially since I wanted to learn to write W3C compatible code right from the start. Anyway…here are some of the resources I used for my first steps (and I’m still a novice in this area).

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