Concise introduction to Ruby on Rails for experienced developers? [closed]

Question

tl;dr: I want a high-level introduction to Rails, which covers what I need to get started with proper reference materials. I don't need basic concepts explained.

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Ruby and rails both seem nice, but the documentation, although voluminous, seems to be all tutorials targeted at people who aren't that experienced as programmers or web developers, or be super-terse snippets on how to use various libraries for people who already know all about rails and ruby.

The material I'm seeing seems to be very task-oriented, which is alright if you want to follow it through without much understanding, and are able to memorise a bunch of things. I, by contrast, do not have a great memory, so I want something concise, which explains the concepts and conventions, and how they fit together. I don't need anything that "introduces" any programming concepts - I'm familiar with functional programming, late-binding, object-orientation. I'm familiar with web technologies (or at least, sufficiently so that I can learn about them). I can read code and api documentation, but I'd rather have something that lets me see the big picture first. I can look at the various resources about the language (or even better, I'd love to also look at documentation for ruby in the same vein as what I'm asking for in relation to rails).

The closest to thing I have seen to what I want is the ruby guides, but they are still very much written in a fragmented and task oriented style.

I'm not a fan of programming books (generally either too linear, becomes out of date more quickly than suites of docs maintained online), but if the best material is published in that form, so be it.

I don't think I'm that unusual in any of these respects - plenty of people know a huge bunch of stuff (a lot more than I do), don't need their hand held, but want to start exploring with a minimum of fuss.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You might be interested in Agile Development with Rails by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas.

You could skip the "Building Application" part and go straight to Rails in Depth part.

I quote the introduction to this last part:

For the rest of the book, we’ll go through Rails topic by topic (which pretty much means module by module). You have seen most of these modules in action before. We will cover not only what each module does but also how to extend or even replace the module and why you might want to do so. The chapters in Part III cover all the major subsystems of Rails: Active Record, Active Resource, Action Pack (including both Action Controller and Action View), and Active Support. This is followed by an in-depth look at migrations. Then we are going to delve into the interior of Rails and show how the com- ponents are put together, how they start up, and how they can be replaced. Having shown how the parts of Rails can be put together, we’ll complete this book with a survey of a number of popular replacement parts, many of which can be used outside of Rails. But first, we need to set the scene. This chapter covers all the high-level stuff you need to know to understand the rest: directory structures, configuration, and environments.

I don't know if I have right to paste this but if that can make you buy this book, I'm sure the author would agree!

Answer 2

To become good at Rails in my opinion you should first be sure that you understand Ruby well. I would suggest browsing through (careful reading is not necessary if you're already an established programmer) some of the basic ruby books like: Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby and Programming Ruby.

After this, you should become familiar with the Rails API's and DSL's, I would suggest beginning with reading Ruby on Rails Guides. When you understand the Rails basics the ultimate Rails reference is Ryan Bates' excellent Railscasts. If you don't like watching videos the site has an ascii mirror. Even if you don't have a specific task in mind, go watch a few of these to really understand the way problems are tackled in Rails.

Ofcourse when it comes to actually gaining skill in developing Rails skills, it is imperative that you try your hand at actually making a few Rails applications. Rails has a notoriously steep learning curve, so it's best when you have tried a few simple unimportant applications before you try to build your life's work with Rails.