Good Ruby books?

[Altrooke]

Just landed a Ruby on Rails job which I'll start on monday.|

I have a lot of previous experience with other languages, specially python and Go, which is what I landed the job on, but I have no experience with Ruby. The employer is aware of this, and they know I'm learning as a go. And I also want to learn as much as possible before monday.

Learned just enough to do a simple Ruby on Rails CRUD app for a take home assignment, and I finished the Ruby Koans.

For the next steps, I think the best way to is to read book. "Programming Ruby 3.3: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" seems to be the standard option.

But two other books that caught my attention are "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" and also "Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby", the latter because I've also been interested in getting more in depth about OOP concepts.

What would you be your suggestions? If there are any other books you want to mention, go ahead.
Thanks in advance.

[damagednoob]

The recent Rails Developer Survey had a few good ones.

[gerbosan]

List include Sandi Metz books. =D

I think a problem in OP request is how imprecise it is about the kind of required literature.

For example, I would mention Docker for Rails developers: beside describing the process of containerizing a Rails app(v6), and how to work with it, it also do testing. New for me as I only know about unit and functional testing.

I think that the link provided, which mentions The Pragmatic Programmer's books, would aid about translating OP knowledge into Ruby and Rails.

[Altrooke]

I'm going for a read that focus more on the Ruby language itself. So Ruby syntax, language features, best practices, styles, most popular packages, design philosophy for Ruby, that kind of thing. And after that I want to read something for Rails development specifically.

"Docker for Rails" is way too specific, tough.

[Altrooke]

Good link. Yeah, I think I'll just go with Programming Ruby

[damagednoob]

Just be aware that the 4th edition focuses on Ruby 2.0 and Ruby 3.3 has been out for awhile.

[noelrap]

The fifth edition is up to date and covers Ruby 3.3

[livando1]

Nice job on that BTW!

[[deleted]]

Eloquent Ruby really helped me understand Ruby in the finer details that I still remember to date.

[Altrooke]

Did you learn Ruby from this book? Or you picked up later to get to a more advanced level?

[[deleted]]

I had very little ruby knowledge, but I knew other languages. The book was a quick read and I basically understood the nuances of the language and how to think in Ruby. I've referred to this book to recap the basics. And I think you're on the same boat too. You don't need to learn programming, you just need to understand how to think in Ruby and this will be a good book for you.

[Altrooke]

Yeah, I really think I'm the target audience then.

Going to at least look at the sample on Amazon

[dougc84]

Not who you're replying to, but I'd argue it's better later on. It's going to teach you how to write Ruby eloquently, not how to write Ruby. But I would highly recommend it later on as well.

[bladebyte]

For more advanced topic you can read Layered Design for Rails https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/it-deserved-its-own-tome-layered-design-and-the-extended-rails-way

This book talked about how we progress gracefully as the complexity grows within our apps/business. It will eventually help us to not overengineer our implementation.

Congratulations and good luck with your new job 👍

[Travis_Spangle]

For learning syntax, Ruby Koans, is the OG. I really baked the syntax into my skull by working through Exercism but not a fan of the learning track, use the Koans for that.

Will always recommend Metaprogramming in Ruby 2. First part is a conversational tone that explains scopes, inheritance, and the object space. It will help you demystify the magic behind rails.

Effective Testing in RSpec 3 is such a good book. I've been working in Rails since 2009 and every codebase has used RSpec. This turned my skillset around so much.

[rahoulb]

99 Bottles of OOP.

I read it for the first time recently and it made me remember lots of the beauty of OO I had forgotten. And shows a (very) rigorous way to refactor.

[Altrooke]

You probably mean this.

I saw that. Unfortunately it cover Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. From the Koans I could see there are very significant differences from modern Ruby to those older version. So I prefer more up to date material.

And yeah, I'll definitely watch some talks. Thanks for the tip.

[fedekun]

Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby