What do I need to learn Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, AJAX?

#1

So I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that if I wanna get stuff done, I
need to either A) Find some dang money and pay people to do it or B) Do
it myself. I’m opting for B. Soooo…now I’ve got some
programming/technologies to learn. I’m self-employed and I can afford to
take a month (or 2) off to totally immerse myself in this and learn how
to do it.

Right now (on a programming level) I’ve got an intermediate knowledge of
PHP and veerrrryyy beginner knowledge in Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and
AJAX. At the end of this little “learning spree” I’d like to be on a
very strong intermediate to expert level on all of this.

Now…the problem is that I don’t even really know where to start. RoR
is up and running on my server so I’m good to go for actually coding
stuff…but what do I read? What do I learn first? What’s the best way
to teach myself this stuff?

Any advice/suggestions here would be huge.

#2

Start with:
1). http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.html
2). http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html

in that particular order.

–
Kent

http://www.datanoise.com

#3

And maybe even
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/index.html
for good measure.

#4

Also, if you can spring it take the next RailsStudio
(http://studio.pragprog.com/rails/index.html) class. It’s three days
and is an excellent way to get yourself up to speed quickly. It’s
also an incredible value. Good luck.

Michael

#5

Josh

Start with the pdf version of :
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html

, print it, and bind it in 3 parts.
The dead-tree version uses a paper that’s too thin => you can’t really
annotate and write and highlight.
Try and make it your own “Head-First with RoR”.

You can learn Ruby online right now, with your browser :
tryruby.hobix.com/

Alain

#6

Another good method…

There is alot of good items of ruby and RoR on the full archives of:

http://www.planetrubyonrails.org

Everything from cheat sheets to how RoR scales and other goodness…

Also, reading the archives doe sintroduce you to the ruby ad RoR
cultures.

#7

Thanks everybody for the tips.

What about things like JavaScript/AJAX? What are some good resources for
learning that?