I am a Media Designer and Ruby on Rails beginner on a very basic
level. I have a good background in HTML & CSS, but that’s basically
it. I havent worked with Ruby before and I am just getting startet
with the Terminal of my Mac OS and get the basics of JavaScript. I’ve
worked my way through a lot of resources (screencasts, forums,
tutorials, …) and got a pretty good overview of what Ruby on Rails can
do and why it is a great framework.
My problem is, the massive amount of information is overwhelming. I
still look for a good point to start a project that enables me to
learn Ruby on Rails on a more practical than theoretical way. What
would you suggest to be a good application to start with as a
beginner? A project that is quite easy to setup, and makes sense for a
Designer.
Start here and click on the very first link in the topic post. The
complete walk-through of a CMS system is really solid and the
instructional methods provided account for a gradual learning curve with
rails.
By the time you reach the 16th lesson, you will have a solid rails
foundation..
I was a lot like you. I have a really strong BG in HTML CSS and Flash
dev. With a little JS. I bought numerous tutorials and books. I have
watched Ryan Bates Railscasts many times.
Everyone learns differently, but from my experiences over the past
year and a half i would say, get your head around Ruby Basics. The
Pick Axe Book is good for this. You dont need to memorize the whole
thing, just become familar with basics. It helps to understand what is
rails and what is ruby
And out of all the books that really helped "turn the light on" i
found Oreilly Head First Rails to be the best for an all out beginner
Head First Rails [Book] - It really helped me make
more sense of the others, because its not so "programmer" speak.
The Agile book is good and so is Rails Way by Obie. Along with
Railscasts, I have purchased many of Geoffrey Grosenbach's screencasts
over at peepcode.com They're really good as well.
