This morning at RailscampAU in Perth we facilitated an informal discussion around learning Ruby. We had a very impressive turnout of people from all levels of experience who contributed to the discussion. Here's a list of some of the resources and ideas mentioned.

ruby-newbies.md

Ruby Newbies Chat Notes

Q1: What do you hope to get out of learning Ruby?

• Program things faster (3)
• Something out of nothing
• Design things better rather than just make it work
• Avoid getting bogged down in nitty-gritty syntax (3)
• Testing practice
• Focus on being nice for developers
• Workplace used it
• "Beautiful" compared to other languages
• Expressive (2)
• Community support (2)
• Gems and libraries
• Use it for tools and automation tasks
• Easier to pick up than other languages

Q2: What resources have you found the most helpful?

• Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial
• Asking others (Twitter, in person, 15 Minute Rule)
• Eloquent Ruby, by Russ Olsen
• Learn to Program, by Chris Pine
• Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby
• Tuts+ Ruby Courses
• Learn how to Google the right things! (If anyone has any resources around this it would be great to include something)
• Open up the code and read it
• Codeschool Ruby Path
• Railscasts: Ruby on Rails Screencasts
• Learn Ruby the Hard Way, by Zed Shaw
• Ruby Koans
• Exercism.io
• Project Euler

Q3: Tell us about something you've found particularly challenging.

• 8 hours fixing a bug, find 1 line you accidentally commented
• Being told to do testing in the first 6 months of learning before you can code properly
• Give yourself permission to suck
• Perfectionism vs motivation
• Advice from books about writing is very good and relevant (e.g. inner critic)
• Jargon! Even if you know the language jargon, each problem domain has its own
• "You should do this" "You should do that" blog posts

Q4: What do you wish someone told you when you were just getting started?

• How to say "I don't know"
• What imposter syndrome is and how many of us have it.
• Stop wasting your time with PHP
• Everybody learns differently
• Ruby pry, read the docs, use it better (pry rescue, pry stack explorer)
• Rails camp and community events are not as hostile as you might think
• List of Ruby operators, since they can't be googled
• First make it work, then make it better

What to get out of Ruby?

• Program things faster (3)
• Something out of nothing
• Design things better rather than just make it work
• Avoid getting bogged down in nitty-gritty syntax (3)
• Testing practice
• Focus on being nice for developers
• Workplace used it
• "Beautiful" compared to other languages
• Expressive (2)
• Community support (2)
• Gems and libraries
• Use it for tools and automation tasks
• Easier to pick up than other languages

Good resources for Ruby

• Just asking people in the community for help - everybody is friendly
• Don't stay up all night
• Eloquent Ruby
• _why's Poignant Guide
• Learn how to google things correctly (major IT skill)
• Gem's code = 1000s of examples
• Chris Pine's book, 1st 8 chapters are smooth
• Code school
• Zed Shaw - learning Ruby the hard way
• Books may not be your "thing" it's OK
• tryruby.org
• Ruby Koans (more advanced?)
• Exercism, nit picks, comparing solutions
• Project Euler
• Always be building some project - it will drive your learning

Something you've found challenging

• 8 hours fixing a bug, find 1 line you accidentally commented
• Being told to do testing in the first 6 months of learning before you can code properly
• Give yourself permission to suck
• Perfectionism vs motivation
• Give yourself permission to suck
• Advice from books about writing is very good and relevant (e.g. inner critic)
• Jargon! Even if you know the language jargon, each problem domain has its own
• "You should do this" "You should do that" blog posts

What do you wish someone told you when you started?

• How to say "I don't know"
• Explain imposter syndrome
• Stop wasting your time with PHP
• Everybody learns differently
• Ruby pry, read the docs, use it better (pry rescue, pry stack explorer)
• Rails camp and community events are not as hostile as you think from all the misogyny articles
• List of Ruby operators, since they can't be googled

Thanks so much for the notes @puyo! I've added them to the main Gist.