If I were to want to start learning Ruby (with little programming experience) what would be the learning track to take in books, etc.?

My first two steps: I started from nothing with Pine's Learn to Program, and then moved on to Learn Ruby the Hard Way.

http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/

After you've got the basics, the best way to learn is to have a problem to solve or need to address. About halfway through LRTHW I started making notes on little programs I could try to build once I'd finished the course. None were very original: a custom contacts book, a script that scraped football scores and added them to a text file, a simple single-serving website that told me the weather for my area. My learning spiralled out from there.

Finally, this is an online version of the famous Pickaxe book, which I found to be a good reference. I wouldn't recommend it as a first port of call if you're new to programming, but once the terminology (object, class, method, variable etc) has sunk in it's useful for looking things up.

http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/

Have fun!

BTW, that online copy is the 1st edition of the book, for ruby 1.8.6 (or maybe even earlier).

The language is now at 1.9.3, and while things are fundamentally the same there are assorted little differences.

Still, as a free intro to the language it's not bad.

If you want to buy a book I'd suggest The Ruby Programming Language, as well as anything by Gregory Brown or David A. Black.

Greg also produces the Practicing Ruby newsletter which I cannot recommend highly enough.

http://practicingruby.com/

Greg does amazing stuff.

See also http://university.rubymendicant.com and http://blog.rubybestpractices.com

Relevant enough question IMHO, despite the downvotes. Chris Pine's book Learn to Program has a good reputation, and it tackles both of your goals: learning to program, and learning Ruby. The second edition is set to be released in five days.

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-Pragmatic-Programmers-Ch... http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

> The second edition is set to be released in five days.

I think you misunderstood the Amazon site. The book's second edition was released in 2009. (I have a hard copy here that I confirmed with.) And the PragProg site doesn't say anything about an upcoming 3rd edition.

I think you misunderstood this Amazon note: "In stock on November 6, 2011." That just means they are out of stock and expect to get more by November 6th.

You're correct. I saw "in stock ..." and assumed the second edition was brand new.

I echo the nod for Metaprogramming Ruby

Quite honestly, I haven't gotten into Ruby Best Practices yet, but credit must be given to Gregory Brown for making it freely available: http://rubybestpractices.com/

As a middling programmer trying to learn Ruby, O'Reilly Ruby Cookbook has been by far the best reference. Great example code, great explanation, and best of all, the recipes are actually useful: http://www.crummy.com/writing/RubyCookbook/

"Metaprogramming Ruby" is really great. If you are an experienced programmer (especially with Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell etc knowledge) I would recommend getting comfortable with the basic syntax and then diving straight into this book. It really cuts to the chase as to why ruby really is such an interesting language, something which I felt an entire read through of the pick-axe didn't really accomplish.

My take:

- Ruby:http://programmingzen.com/ruby-and-rails-recommended-books/

- Rails: http://programmingzen.com/rails-books/

Great list, does anybody know of a Python or C equivalent for this?

Yeah here is one for Python:

http://wordaligned.org/articles/essential-python-reading-lis...

Python doesn't require a reading list. You're basically writing pseudocode, just make sure to indent it properly.