Since I’ve reached the part of my internship where I need to evaluate a Ruby web API client library and had never written Ruby, I went looking for places to learn! Some of these are books, some are websites, some are web tutorials. All are online and free. If you’re new to Ruby, give these a shot!

Books:

Ruby Best Practices: http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/oreilly/booksamplers/7_Ruby_Best_Practices_Sampler.pdf
Previously available for free at http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/. The author is now working on Practicing Ruby: https://practicingruby.com/
Interesting links from Practicing Ruby: https://practicingruby.com/articles/meditations-on-bad-and-good-code-1 and https://practicingruby.com/articles/meditations-on-bad-and-good-code-2 .

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide: http://ruby-doc.com/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
When people talk about “pickaxe book” this is the one they’re talking about! This version is fairly dated:
“This book documents Version 1.6 of Ruby, which was released in September 2000.”

Why’s (Poignant) Guide To Ruby: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/
If you want an off-the-wall introduction to Ruby, this one has cartoon foxes.

Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book: http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/

Learn Ruby The Hard Way: http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/book/

Web-based tutorials:

Ruby Koans: http://rubykoans.com/
Make things work! Also downloadable.

Try Ruby: http://tryruby.org/
More in-browser Ruby tutorials.

Codeacademy’s Ruby module: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/ruby
Interactive web-based Ruby lessons.

RubyWarrior: https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior/#/
Adorable game where you write Ruby code to move your warrior and defeat enemies.

Misc:
A MIT OpenCourseWare handout that has a no-frills guide to some basics and talks about differences between Ruby and Python: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-170-software-studio-spring-2013/recitations/MIT6_170S13_rec3-Ruby.pdf

Ruby Style Guide: https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide . I’ve been told that this is as close as the Ruby community gets to consensus on what “good Ruby” looks like.

command line ruby cheat sheets: http://cheat.errtheblog.com/s/rvm

Ruby Cookbook is not freely available, but the all the code from the book is: http://www.crummy.com/writing/RubyCookbook/

Ruby is definitely not what I am used to, but it seems like an interesting language and I’m looking forward to learning more of it when I have more time.