Resources for Getting Started with Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is leaving the early adopter phase and becoming more mainstream. More people want to learn Rails but don’t know where to begin. Well, I have come to the rescue. The resource list below is a good starting point. It includes tutorials, books, blogs, podcasts and many other educational resources that have done wonders for me throughout my Rails learning process. I hope others will find them helpful too.

I personally enjoy interactive and visual experiences. The interactive tutorials (sometimes with a live person) were very useful to me. However, plenty of other people prefer to learn by reading, so I have included great resources for these folks too. I also recommend attending meetups and conferences. Getting involved in the community is a great way to find mentors who can help you out, and participating at events and user groups is a good way to stay on top of the latest news and cool projects.

If I’ve left out any resources that you’ve found helpful, I would love to hear about them. Please let me know about them in the comments section. ###Online Tutorials Ruby Learning Official Ruby on Rails Guides Rails Tutorial Why’s (Poignant) Guide [Thanks timinman from HN] ###Courses Engine Yard University Blazing Cloud Courses Ruby Mendicant University Jumpstart Lab Courses [Thanks Jeff from twitter] ###Interactive Tutorials Try Ruby Hackety Hack Ruby Koans BitNami [Thanks Daniel from comments] Rails for Zombies [Thanks Gregg from twitter] ###Books Learn to Program Humble Little Ruby Book The Rails Way The Rails 3 Way [Thanks Raj from comments] ###Blogs Ruby Inside Ruby Reflector Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog PlanetRubyOnRails [Thanks jim_h from HN] ###Screencasts Railscasts PeepCode Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial Lynda.com [Thanks eAlchemist from comments] Learning Rails [Thanks eAlchemist from comments] Learnivore [Thanks Thibaut from comments] ###Podcasts Ruby on Rails Podcast The Ruby Show Teach Me To Code Ruby5 [Thanks EppO from comments] RubyPulse [Thanks pdelgallego from HN] ###Forums Rails Forum StackOverflow Engine Yard Community Site ###Community Ruby Meetup Groups Ruby on Rails Community Confreaks [Thanks pdelgallego from HN] IRC Channels: #ruby, #ruby-lang, #rubyonrails, #jruby, #rubinius