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Learn Ruby: a resource list

Hi! This road map has helped me as a second-career developer who didn't do a bootcamp. I hope it helps you too.

Notice a broken link? Or want to suggest an addition? Open an issue!

Table of contents

The "not done" sections (currently "Foundational tools" and below) are somewhat chaotic because I haven't yet seen what's worth keeping there.

Preliminaries

  • If you want to keep it simple and use just one resource that can take you from zero to hireable, I suggest the free Odin Project. If you want more variety and more depth on certain topics, keep reading!
  • Why did I chose Ruby? At first I went for full-stack JS, but the JS ecosystem was confusing to me as a solo learner. Ruby was a lot more straightforward to me, and generally more enjoyable too.
  • Make sure your day job is conducive to part-time studying if you're a working adult looking to switch careers. I used to be a teacher and spent many of my evenings and weekends grading assignments, which would have made it difficult to learn programming. So I switched to a remote customer support job to free up my schedule.
  • Take care of yourself! Exercise and get plenty of sleep, and you'll better retain what you learn. If you develop wrist pain from heavy computer use, get an ergonomic keyboard, do daily wrist stretches, and try a break app such as Stretchly.

Resources marked with a dollar sign (💲) cost money. You may be able to find books for free (from your local library, interlibrary loan, or more dubious sources) but buy them if/when you can, to support the authors.

Basics

Front-end basics

Ruby basics

Rails basics

Only books and courses are listed below, but be sure to build things as you learn. I myself started building a large-ish Rails app at first, but then I found it more helpful to build a series of small throwaway apps (1, 2, 3, 4).

Getting hired

Foundational tools

SQL

Git

How the Internet works

Advanced Ruby and Rails

See also my GitHub star lists for handy Ruby gems.

Advanced Ruby

Advanced Rails

Front end

HTML and CSS

JavaScript

  • Going deeper:
  • HTML-first JS libraries: There are lots of these, e.g. see Hotwire, many others at UnsuckJS. But these are the ones I'm most interested in.
  • UI and usability

    Accessibility

    Expanding my horizons

    Programming games

    Ruby media

    Chat / social media

    Newsletters

    Blogs

    There are lots more out there; these are just my favorites.

    "Let's build" screencasts

    These are series using at least Rails 7.

    Topical screencasts

    Streams

    Podcasts

    Rails codebases to study

    I've chosen the codebases below based on a these criteria:

    • Is active, with recent commits.
    • Does not use a JS framework on the front end, though I made exceptions.
    • Is well-known or solves a problem that's interesting to me.

    If you want to explore more widely, here are other places to find open-source Ruby projects:

    Without further ado…