# Mastering ruby or rails? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 11, 2005, 5:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004 "2005-12-11T17:25:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/1 "2005-12-11T17:25:30Z")
Let’s say that a person is a very good ruby programmer but so far hasn’t shown any interest for the web. And let’s say that now he wants to start programming with rails. How much of ruby “is in” programming with “rails” and how much is overhead? What I mean is… if one’s intention is to develop in rails, does he really need to study deeply ruby, or would be better to get a general overview of ruby and spend all the time learning ruby on rails? I know I am confused 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/2 "2005-12-11T17:27:20Z")
why a good ruby programmer needs to spend time on ruby at all before starting on rails? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/3 "2005-12-11T17:27:21Z")
On 11/28/05, ako… [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > why a good ruby programmer needs to spend time on ruby at all before > starting on rails? 😉 Yes, I don’t know why a very good ruby programmer needs to get a general overview of ruby. If you understand Ruby basics, picking up Rails shouldn’t be too difficult. An understanding of basic web technologies (http, html, css, etc) would help though. ---
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/4 "2005-12-11T17:27:21Z")
ako… wrote: > why a good ruby programmer needs to spend time on ruby at all before > starting on rails? 😉 To make informed decisions. James ---
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/5 "2005-12-11T17:27:21Z")
When I started working with Rails I found myself at a lack experience when it came time to creating more advanced features. Rails provides great functionality within its sandbox, but when you want to do thing like create your own module, or extend the functionality of ActiveRecord to do something custom, you need to leverage Ruby. Writing Rails is writing Ruby, even though there may be a separate documentation system, you still need to learn Ruby to do simple things like manage the Time object, or create a File stream to write to. For me, its not a choice whether to learn Ruby or learn Rails, you have to learn both regardless 🙂 Warmest regards, Nathan. * * * Nathaniel S. H. Brown Toll Free 1.877.4.INIMIT Inimit Innovations Phone 604.724.6624 [www.inimit.com](http://www.inimit.com) Fax 604.444.9942 ---
**Author:** ![tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@tony](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tony)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mastering-ruby-or-rails/53004/6 "2005-12-11T17:27:22Z")
On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 10:17:28AM +0900, tony wrote: > Let’s say that a person is a very good ruby programmer but so far hasn’t > shown any interest for the web. And let’s say that now he wants to start > programming with rails. How much of ruby “is in” programming with > “rails” and how much is overhead? What I mean is… if one’s intention > is to develop in rails, does he really need to study deeply ruby, or > would be better to get a general overview of ruby and spend all the time > learning ruby on rails? I know I am confused 🙂 Just start, and whenever you don’t understand something, go learn about it. This is the optimal way to learn exactly what you need to know. Trying “learn rails” first is crazy. Just start building something. regards, Ed