Rails: Novice to Ninja, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3: Introducing Ruby

While this chapter makes no attempt to constitute a complete guide to the Ruby language, it will introduce you to some of its basics. We'll power through a crash course in object-oriented programming that covers the more common features of the language, leaving the more obscure aspects of Ruby for a dedicated reference guide. I'll also point out some of the advantages that Ruby has over other languages when it comes to developing applications for the Web.

There used to be a longstanding axiom (previously known as "The Rails Newbie Axiom") that one could learn Rails without first learning Ruby. This axiom has been challenged and, rightly so, proven less true than originally thought. I came to Ruby through Rails many ...