Previous to working at PayPerPost I never experienced Ruby or Ruby on Rails, more of a PHP, C# guy myself. So I bought the books and read them. As usual they were the technical explanations with examples and each chapter introducing other concepts. All well and good.

I was gaining an insight to Ruby on Rails (RoR) with the fundamentals of the books and actually working on the codebase of PayPerPost, but then Argus hit. From the start of spiking what we could do with Argus I was involved with Java, ActionScript, and extreme JavaScript. Not to mention looking at Django and a few other frameworks. Now two and a half months later I find myself beginning to work with RoR again. It also means I need to re-acquaint myself with it.

If you’re new or interested in learning more about Ruby let me pass along this link to you Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby . I found that it really helped me understand how Ruby operates as a whole and more than the few books I read. This is because the ebook is actually fun to read. Along with teaching the uses of Ruby there are story lines about foxes, an organ instructor, a mad professor, even a dragon slaying rabbit. So you’re learning Ruby through story examples.

Albeit, the stories eventually become greater than the Ruby learning. I did find myself skipping many paragraphs/pages because they had every aspect to the story and none to Ruby. However when the story lended credence to Ruby I completely understand what was being presented. Meta-programming is a prime example of this; creating a creature class and then deriving different creatures for the rabbit to slay. Very good programming concepts and well taught.

I certainly recommend this as a reading.