Learning Ruby: a resource list

Hi! As a second-career developer who didn't go through a bootcamp, I've found it helpful to keep a roadmap of learning resources—building my own curriculum, in a way. I hope this list helps you too!

If you notice any broken links here, please let me know by opening an issue.

The "not done" sections (currently "Fundamental tools" and below) are somewhat chaotic because I haven't yet seen what's worth keeping there.

Preliminaries
Basics
Fundamental tools
Ruby blogs, podcasts, screencasts
Front end
Rails codebases to study
Advanced Ruby and Rails
- Misc. Ruby/Rails
- Rails architecture
Games in Ruby
Expanding my horizons
Other resource lists

Preliminaries

If you want to keep it simple and use just one resource that can take you from zero to hireable, I suggest the free Odin Project. If you want more variety, keep reading!
If you're wondering why I chose Ruby and not full-stack JavaScript, I explain why on my blog. Or if you want a second opinion, read this or watch this.
Make sure your day job is conducive to part-time studying if you're a working adult looking to switch careers. I used to be a teacher and spent hours grading in the evenings and on weekends, which would have made studying very difficult. So I switched to a remote customer support job to free up my schedule.
Find a system for keeping organized notes, code snippets, and bookmarked links. I use a simple text file.
You should spend more time coding than reading about coding. I mention this because below I list lots of books and courses but not many hands-on projects. Why? Because starting a project and getting into a coding routine is easy (if you can't think of any project ideas, try these lists: 1, 2, 3), whereas knowing what to read is not at all obvious at the beginning. Hence the focus on books and courses here.
Last but not least, take care of yourself! Exercise and get plenty of sleep, and you'll better retain what you learn. If you develop wrist pain from heavy computer use, act swiftly: get an ergonomic keyboard (the one I use has a learning curve, but I love it and it was affordable), do daily wrist stretches, and try using a break app such as Workrave.

Without further ado, here is my learning roadmap. Resources marked with a dollar sign (💲) cost money. You may be able to find books for free (from your local library, interlibrary loan, or more dubious sources) but buy them if/when you can, to support the authors.

Basics

Front-end basics

Learn some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: The Odin Project - Foundations path. Or if that doesn't click with you, try resources under "Front end" below.
Build a blog from scratch: I've rebuilt it by now, but here is the first iteration, and here's how I built it. Building a blog is not only a good exercise in itself, but it might also give you extra motivation to write about what you learn.

Ruby basics

Basics: The Odin Project - Ruby or (for more interactivity) Try Ruby and BigBinary Academy
Guided practice: Exercism. Be sure to take notes each time you learn something new in an exercise, and at the end you could write up your reflections (here are mine).
OOP: Sandi Metz's books 💲Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby (a.k.a. POODR) and 💲99 Bottles of OOP
Build a Ruby app: Apply those OOP lessons. I made a CLI (command-line interface) app that gives statistics on a reading log. Or if you want to make a game, see the Games in Ruby section.
Build a site with Bridgetown: With Bridgetown you can build a site without yet getting into the complexity of Rails. Maybe rebuild your blog? Be sure to join the Bridgetown Discord server—the maintainers are very welcoming and helpful to newbies.

Rails basics

Only books and courses are listed below, but be sure to build stuff as you learn. I myself started building a large-ish Rails app at first, but then I found it more helpful to build a series of small throwaway apps (1, 2, 3, 4).

Rails basics:
- GoRails - Rails for Beginners
- The Odin Project - Rails or (if you prefer videos) 💲Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial
Rails testing and RSpec:.
- Upcase - Fundamentals of TDD and Test Doubles
- 💲Jason Swett - The Complete Guide to Rails Testing
- 💲Effective Testing with RSpec 3
Polishing up:
- Style guides for Ruby, Rails, and RSpec

Ruby/Rails communities

Here are some places where you can learn with others or ask questions when you get stuck.

Communities:
Mentorship: I got mentorship about a year after starting with Rails, but you may benefit from it earlier.
- First Ruby Friend where aspiring and first-year developers are connected with a mentor.
- The Rails subreddit is another good place to find a mentor.
Subscribe to Ruby newsletters: You can learn a lot by listening in on what the Ruby community is talking about.

Fundamental tools

SQL

Git

How the Internet works

Linux / command line

Ruby blogs, podcasts, screencasts

Blogs:
"Let's build" screencasts: My criteria for inclusion are (1) not too out of date, and (2) insightful for someone who has done a basic Rails course such as The Odin Project.
- Rails Code Along – Rails 6, Heroku, Devise, Bootstrap
- Web-Crunch - Let's Build collection
- Web-Crunch - Job marketplace app
- Dr. Nic - Notion clone
- CJ Avilla - Automate YouTube Video Production
- CJ Avilla - Stock App
- CJ Avilla - clearbnb
- CJ Avilla - CreatorPlatform.xyz
- Mix & Go - Instagram clone
- SupeRails - user feedback app
- TypeFast - Trello clone
- TypeFast - AirBnB clone
- TypeFast - Twitter clone
- Pet adoption app
Topical screencasts:
Podcasts:
- Ruby for All
- Sierra Rails
- Fullstack Ruby
- Remote Ruby
- Rooftop Ruby
- Code and the Coding Coders who Code it
- The Rubber Duck Dev Show
- Framework Friends about Rails and Laravel
- Ruby Rogues
- Ruby on Rails Podcast, especially starting at episode 372 went they went independent, brought on co-hosts, and hired an editor.
- Code with Jason
- Maintainable (not Ruby-specific)
- DevDiscuss (not Ruby-specific)
- The Bike Shed
- Running in Production – Rails

Front end

HTML and CSS

JavaScript

Web components

Dave Rupert - HTML with Superpowers: The Guidebook or 💲the course version
Web components section in the Modern JavaScript Tutorial
Web Components Today
Lit docs
Build some UIs with Shoelace, a web component UI library.
Read the Shoelace source code
💲Fullstack Web Components: Complete Guide to Building UI Libraries with Web Components
Build a UI following Jared White - How Ruby and Web Components Can Work Together
Experiment using Turbo to drive front-end behavior: "Turbo 7.2.0 (currently in beta) allows you to define your own Stream actions which can be any JS code you want. By combining a custom Stream action or two with web components, you can essentially drive reactive frontend behavior from the backend stupidly easily. Loooove it! 😍 […] For a turnkey example, you could check out https://github.com/hopsoft/turbo_ready " —Jared White on The Spicy Web Discord

UI and Usability

💲Don't Make Me Think
💲The Design of Everyday Things
Victor Ponamariov - 50 UI Tips
💲Victor Ponamariov - 100 UI/UX Tips & Tricks (or on the landing page)
💲Refactoring UI
Better Rails views:
Phlex

Hotwire

Community and news:
- StimulusReflex community on Discord
- Hotwire dev newsletter
Basics:
- Read the docs
- Evil Martians talk and blog post
- Alexandre Ruban - Turbo Rails Tutorial
- David Colby - Turbo Rails 101
- Hotwire Handbook, Part 1 (seems abandoned, though)
- Andrea Fomera - Learn Hotwire by Building a Forum
- David Colby - Hotwired ATS: Modern, full-stack Rails development
Screencasts and blogs:
- Mix & Go screencasts on Hotwire
- SupeRails screencasts on Hotwire
- SupeRails blog which includes even more Hotwire tips.
- David Colby's blog
Examples and snippets:
- Hotwire examples from Thoughtbot
- Better Stimulus
- Stimulus-Use
- Stimulus Components for inspiration
Hotwire extensions:
Multi-platform:
- 💲Ayush Newatia - The Rails and Hotwire Codex
Other similar libraries:
- HTMX: read the book Hypermedia Systems and/or watch Carson Gross — Return To Hypermedia: Solving Javascript Fatigue Using Fundamental Web Architecture

Rails codebases to study

I've chosen the codebases below based on a these criteria:

Is active, with recent commits.
Does not use a JS framework on the front end, though I made exceptions.
Is well-known or it solves a problem that's interesting to me.

If you want to explore more widely, here are other places to find open-source Ruby projects:

OpenSourceRails
Ruby projects on CodeTriage, though not all of them are Rails apps
Real World Rails (and how to search through it)
Awesome Ruby and Rails Open Source Apps

Small codebases: Less than 50k lines of Ruby code.

Larger codebases: More than 50k lines of Ruby code.

github.com/solidusio/solidus (72k lines): E-commerce platform.
github.com/mastodon/mastodon (75k lines): Like Twitter but self-hosted and federated.
github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork (102k lines): An online marketplace for local food.
github.com/forem/forem (103k lines): Powers the blogging site dev.to. Uses Preact on the front end.
github.com/alphagov/whitehall (117k lines): Publishes government content on gov.uk.
github.com/decidim/decidim (288k lines): The participatory democracy framework.
github.com/discourse/discourse (322k lines): Discussion forum platform. Has an Ember.js front end.
github.com/instructure/canvas-lms (745k lines): A popular LMS (learning management system).
gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab (1.8 million lines): Like GitHub but with CI/CD and DevOps features built in. Has great docs on architecture.

Advanced Ruby and Rails

Misc. Ruby/Rails

Advanced Rails:
- 💲Noah Gibbs - Rebuilding Rails
- Rails Guides
- Ruby Science on design patterns in Rails
- Rails API docs
Active Record:
- Upcase - Advanced ActiveRecord Querying
- (upcoming) 💲Jason Charnes - Active Record Cookbook
- 💲Nate Berkopec - The Complete Guide to Rails Performance
- 💲Nate Berkopec - The Ruby on Rails Performance Apocrypha
- Mature Optimization Handbook (not Rails-specific)
Advanced Ruby:
- Victor Shepelev (zverok) - The Ruby Reference (Ruby 2.7) and Ruby Changes (for Ruby 3+)
- Ruby Regexp
- 💲Metaprogramming Ruby
- 💲Joel Drapper - upcoming book on metaprogramming
- Jesse Storimer - Working with Ruby Threads
- 💲Ruby Under a Microscope
Background jobs:
- Nate Berkopec - Sidekiq in Practice
Authentication:
- Steve Polito - Rails Authentication from Scratch and the derived Rails MVP Authentication
- Lázaro Nixon - Authentication Zero
Rails deployment/DevOps:
- 💲Josef Strzibny - Deployment from Scratch
- 💲Deploying Rails Applications
- 💲Efficient Rails DevOps
- Cameron Dutro - RailsConf talk "Kuby: Active Deployment for Rails Apps"
- Guides to deploying Rails on AWS: 1, 2, 3

Rails architecture

A.K.A. where the heck do I put my business logic / how can I keep my models from getting huge?

DDD (Domain-Driven Design):
- Getting modules right with Domain-driven Design
- 💲Learning Domain-Driven Design
Other approaches:
- (upcoming) 💲Peter Solnica - Data Oriented Web Development with Ruby
- 💲Ryan Bigg - Maintainable Rails
- Try contexts, inspired by Phoenix
- Learn about the repository pattern: article, talk
Browse the relevant gems:
- dry-transaction
- Interactor
- Sequent - CQRS and event sourcing
- Rails Event Store - for an event-driven architecture
- Ventable - a variation of the Observer design pattern
- Wisper - the Publish-Subscribe design pattern
- Packwerk - to enforce boundaries and modularize Rails applications
Review criticisms of the Active Record pattern:
- Bob Martin - Active Record vs. Objects
Review criticisms of service objects:

Games in Ruby

Ruby 2D:
- Official docs
- Code with Mario - Ruby 2D screencasts
💲DragonRuby Game Toolkit:
- Official docs
- Building Games with DragonRuby
- DragonRuby Zines
- DragonRuby Recipes
- Scale template

Expanding my horizons

How computers work:
- 💲Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
- NandGame
- From Nand to Tetris course (Part 1, Part 2), optionally with the textbook 💲The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
- 💲Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
- 💲Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces
Compilers:
- Crafting Interpreters
Coding challenges:
- CodeWars
- Advent of Code
- Project Euler
- Code katas: awesome-katas and another list
Design patterns:
- 💲Head First Design Patterns
- Refactoring.Guru
Software architecture:
- 💲Designing Data-Intensive Applications
- 💲The Architecture of Open Source Applications
Monitoring:
- 💲Practical Monitoring
- 💲Observability Engineering
Misc.
- Divio Documentation System
Learn other app frameworks: Jobs in Ruby are mostly in Rails, but it's still valuable to broaden my horizons and learn different approaches.
- Roda in its batteries-included form via Bridgetown
- Hanami which will also be easier than ever to get started with once it hits 2.1. Here's an example app: github.com/decafsucks/decafsucks. And another: github.com/bkuhlmann/hemo
- Lucky, a web framework for Crystal… which is not Ruby but it's close 😉 Here's a handy starting point: Crystal for Rubyists. You can even use Crystal alongside a Ruby app, for background jobs: github.com/crimson-knight/fruit_juice.

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