Question

I’m a complete programming beginner. I know a little HTML and the only CSS I know is using a change element tool like Stylebot. Obviously I don’t want to be overwhelmed, but I’d like to be able to develop websites, or at the very least, throw up some MVP’s.

What should I learn along with RoR? If you can, list them in order of importance starting with the most mandatory.

Answer 1

I think I’ve seen just about every Rails tutorial there is (at least the most well known).

My favorite is the Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

The best part is, it’s free – as in beer. But it’s also very thorough. I’ve gone through it at least twice to get concepts that I had a hard time with the first time around.

As you go through it, you’ll learn Ruby concepts, Rails concepts, and a little CSS and Javascript.

I think Rails is a good choice – it was the first framework I ever picked up, and when you go to other MVC frameworks you will carry over the good habits you learned from Rails.

As far as other things to learn, well it depends on what you want to do. If you want to stick with web development, than you definitely need to learn:

• HTML5 – I think this goes without saying – but be sure to check out Haml as well at some point
• CSS – learn the basics first, then take a look at Sass and Less
• Javascript – most people would agree that JQuery is the predominant framework for basic Javascript work right now
  (manipulating the DOM). But you’ll also find people who are fans of
  MooTools and Dojo (as well as a lot of others I’m sure).
• Javascript Frameworks – JS can quickly turn into a mess if you have a project that is making heavy use of it. My favorite
  Javascript framework is Backbone.js. There are also others that are
  good like – Spine.js, Knockout.js, SproutCore, etc, etc… (there’s
  lots of them)
• Version Control – I really can’t stress enough how important this is. Git version control will help you create branches of code so just in case you screw something up, you can just delete the branch and start over without destroying your whole project (it’s saved my butt a few times). It will also allow you to work with others on your projects. Start a GitHub account and start storing your code there. The RailsTutorial that I linked to above will get you started with that too.

Hopefully that’s enough buzzwords to get you on the right track. If you are just beginning than a lot of this stuff can seem overwhelming, but try to focus on the basics of programming itself for a little while and the rest of it will come together as you go.

Another online book that I am a big fan of is “Learn Ruby the Hard Way”. Don’t let the name fool you – it’s not a difficult book to get through. But it teaches you basic programming skills the old fashioned way – by actually typing out the examples and giving you problems to work through. Well worth taking a look at.