I’m pretty much in the same boat as you.
From what I’ve looked at in job posts, most ruby jobs are with rails.
I like learning from books
Here is a list of pdfs I have. I am reading and studying from these as
much as possible:
Metaprogramming_Ruby.pdf // very good but it is pretty advanced I would
wait for a month of intensive learning.
poodr.pdf // Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby. This is basically
an introduction to oop, which it describes in very simple practical
terms. I think it could be used as a introduction to programming if you
put some effort into it.
oreilly.the.ruby.programming.language.jan.2008.pdf //the cool thing of
this is that it is written by matz. I <3 matz
poignant-guide.pdf// I don’t like this book but it could be worth the
read to hammer home a few points, why’s poignant guide
Design Patterns in Ruby.pdf //looks good but I haven’t done much of it,
design patterns are important
The online guide for ruby is the best introduction to rails I’ve found:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/
The-Well-Grounded-Rubyist.pdf// looks good so far
The pickaxe edition 4// its great, I did most of it in a few days. I
will go back to it to fill in the topics I just quick went over.
The Rails 4 Way.pdf by Obie F… I haven’t started this but it
looks good I will do it after the rails guide
rails_tutorial.pdf// this is hartl’s famous guide, it is very verbose
and and doesn’t have a fast pace. I tried it but it was annoying because
it used a bunch of external tools which is fun but meant it was very
slow. I will try it later if I have time to fill in the gaps and get
more in depth learning.
Ruby S., Thomas D., Heinemeier H. D. - Agile Web D. with
Rails, 4th Edition, Rails 3.2 (The Pragmatic Programmers) - 2011.pdf// a
few years old I haven’t looked at it but there might be some good stuff
in here