I recently published a post that discussed 10 ways of learning Ruby, in that list – you can find anything from interactive platforms, to specific walk-throughs, as mentored by some of the Ruby professionals in the community.
In that very post, I said that I’d continue gathering up some more resources, and hopefully publish a post that would give you access to some free books to learn Ruby, because we all know how much deeper we can learn from books.
You should definitely look into my previous posts about Ruby:
- 5 Websites for Finding Ruby Development Jobs
- Top 5 Ruby IDE Solutions for Web Developers
- 12 Small Web Frameworks for Ruby Developers
it’s all about preparing yourself, knowing that there is no reason to stop, and that more resources are always available. I’m going to publish one more post in the very near future, listing a couple of books on how to learn Ruby on Rails, the Ruby web framework that everyone loves to program with.
I think that’s about it for our introduction, lets take a look at some of the books I was able to find. I don’t guarantee their quality 100%, by they’re the ones that other Ruby community members have encouraged in the past, and I trust their judgement.
1. The Ruby Style Guide
It’s a community organized guide for Ruby best practices, and the coding style that’s recommended to use. Ruby is quite ‘elegant’, and this guide aims to educate you on how you should build your Ruby programs, so that in the future, other developers can jump on the project – without having to scratch their head, full of questions.
2. Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
It’s probably one of the most funny, entertaining and wise Ruby books that you will ever find. It’s packed with funny cartoons, animations and witty comments on Ruby works, and how you should approach it. From what I can tell, it’s still being worked on, but there is so much information in the first six chapters – you’ll know what to do next.
3. How To Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning With Ruby
Is Ruby about computers, or is more about interacting directly with the web? Who knows, but this book will give you plenty of headache to play around with. It’s another book that needs to be completed, and while it’s starting to feel like half of these books aren’t finished, keep reading, there’s plenty of good stuff in here.
This particular books is great to get the basic syntax memorized, first few explanations are pretty good.
4. Just Enough Ruby to Get By
You can finish up this quick HTML book in a few short hours, it has all of the info on how to get Ruby started, and then dives into the basics with a few examples, and tricks along the way. The book isn’t directed aimed at seasoned Ruby programmers. Most of the topics covered by the book will be familiar to programmers who work primarily with Ruby. It might serve a different purpose for Ruby programmers as a refresher.
5. Learn to Program, by Chris Pine
Learn to Program is a very short, yet concise guide on how to get started with Ruby. It’s completely up to you, on how you interpret those tiny tutorials and whether you want to combine them together, to crate something cool. I think it should be bookmarked by anyone who’s just starting out, and needs a friendly reminder of Ruby syntax.
6. Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book
Just a little bit of everything Ruby, I’m enjoying how detailed this book is, and while it might seem that most of the book consists of talking and continuous rambling – it’s all part of the learning process, and will help immensely to get your feet ready for the Ruby marathon.
It’s divided in six different chapters, and touches several aspects of Ruby, even those of system interaction, and networking. Quite a few interesting diagrams as well, for better understanding of the scope of Ruby.
7. Ruby Hacking Guide
If you need a good introduction on what exactly is Ruby, and what is the main purpose of this language, then this is probably your best go-to guide. It’s written in a really professional tone, and if any questions arise – you know exactly what to look for. It’s encouraged to help maintain this book if any errors, or mistakes are found.
8. Ruby User’s Guide
It’s like a mini-documentation, helps you better understand the different modules, functions and variables that Ruby programmers use every day.
9. The Bastards Book of Ruby
The Bastards Book of Ruby is an introduction to programming and its practical uses for journalists, researchers, scientists, analysts, and anyone else whose job is to seek out, make sense from, and show the hard-to-find data.
You’ll see that many of the sections are tagged as ‘Draft’, once again, if any errors do come up, just use Google to find a solution. It’s better than learning from a raw documentation, anyway.
10. The Little Book Of Ruby
You will probably not learn Ruby in just 10 chapters, but you’ll better understand the basics of it, and you’ll definitely know how to pair some of the functions and syntax together, to make basic programs. I’d add this to my collection for future reference, or refreshing the basics of Ruby. Free stuff, what more can you ask for.
Free Books for Learning Ruby
We’re done with our list, once again – great stuff all over the place, it’s all about taking the initiative to get out there, and begin learning. I hope these books will come in handy at some point, I do recommend working with the interactive platforms first – it gives you the chance to write code, before starting to really deepen the knowledge.
