Learn Ruby: a resource list

Hi! This road map has helped me as a second-career developer who didn't do a bootcamp. I hope it helps you too.

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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 and more depth on certain topics, keep reading!
Why did I chose Ruby? At first I went for full-stack JS, but the JS ecosystem was confusing to me as a beginner. So I tried some others, and found Ruby to be the most enjoyable.
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.
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, get an ergonomic keyboard (I use the Keyboardio Atreus, which has a learning curve, but I love it and it was affordable), do daily wrist stretches, and try a break app such as Stretchly.

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 JS: The Odin Project - Foundations path or resources under "Front end" below.
Build a blog from scratch. GitHub Pages is an accessible way to do this. (Choose the option "Project site", then "Start from scratch".)

Ruby basics

Basics:
- The Odin Project - Ruby
- GoRails - Ruby for Beginners if you prefer videos.
- Try Ruby and BigBinary Academy. If you like an interactive approach.
Guided practice:
- Exercism - Ruby. 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 (object-oriented programming):
- 💲Sandi Metz - Practical Object-Oriented Design
- 💲Sandi Metz & Katrina Owen - 99 Bottles of OOP
Build stuff with Ruby. Here are some ideas:
- A CLI (command-line interface) app. I made one that gives statistics on a reading log.
- A game. A text-based game is a great exercise—you could build a SpaceTraders client, for example. Or if you want to build a graphical game, see the Games in Ruby section.
- A static site. Bridgetown is great for (among other things) building static sites, which are simpler than SSR (server-side rendered) sites à la Rails. Maybe rebuild your blog? Be sure to join the Bridgetown Discord server—the maintainers are very welcoming and helpful to newbies.
- More ideas: Coding Challenges, Build your own X, Projectbook, Project-based learning
Reference:
- Ruby API. Mentioning it up here because it's the best Ruby docs site but very little-known. Since its search uses a query param, you can add a search keyword to your browser to let you quickly search from the address bar, for example rb partition would take you to https://rubyapi.org/3.2/o/s?q=partition

Rails basics

Only books and courses are listed below, but be sure to build things 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).

Basics:
- GoRails - Build a Blog with Rails 7 and if you want more along the same lines, Rails 6 for Beginners
- The Odin Project - Rails
Testing:
Polishing up:
- Style guides for Ruby, Rails, and RSpec

Getting hired

Get real-world experience to put on your resume:
- Contribute to open source projects. I've written a short guide on how to get started.
- Ruby Central - Scholars and Guides Program
The job search:
- Notes on my 2021-2022 job search
- Notes on my 2023-2024 job search

Ruby/Rails communities

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

Communities:
Newsletters:
Mentorship:
- First Ruby Friend where aspiring and first-year developers are connected with a mentor.
- r/rails is worth trying too. Examples: 1, 2.

Foundational tools

Linux / command line

Advanced Ruby and Rails

Advanced Ruby

Reference:
- Victor Shepelev (zverok) - The Ruby Reference plus Ruby Changes (covering Ruby 3+). Ruby Evolution is also great.
- RuboCop performance rules
- RuboCop security rules
Concurrency:
- Jesse Storimer - Working with Ruby Threads
- Async Ruby
Text processing:
Misc.:
- Avdi Grimm - Confident Ruby

Advanced Rails

Reference:
- 💲Rebuilding Rails
- 💲The Rails Companion
- 💲The Rails 7 Way
- Rails Guides
- Rails API docs
Architecture:
- Volmer's Rails Guide
- 💲Layered Design for Ruby on Rails Applications
- Develop Single-Machine Rails Applications with LiteStack
- 💲Learning Domain-Driven Design (not Rails-specific)
- 💲Gradual Modularization for Ruby and Rails
Views:
- Phlex and tools based on it, such as Superform.
- Glimmer for Opal and for Web. See the RubyConf 2023 workshop and sample apps.
Performance:
- 💲Nate Berkopec - The Complete Guide to Rails Performance
- 💲Nate Berkopec - The Ruby on Rails Performance Apocrypha
- Mature Optimization Handbook (not Rails-specific)
Background jobs:
Deployment:
Misc.:
- 💲Frictionless Generators

Front end

HTML and CSS

Community:
- The Spicy Web (Discord)
HTML:
CSS:
CSS games:

JS

Basics:
Practice:
- Exercism - JavaScript
- Build something in JS, or do JavaScript30
DOM, forms, and other Web APIs:
React:
- React "Learn" docs
Going deeper:
- You Don't Know JS Yet. Be sure to read the last three parts after they're finished. #TODO
- Deep JS
- What the f*ck JavaScript?
Web components:
- "Hello Web Components"
- The Modern JavaScript Tutorial - Web Components
- MDN - Web Components
- Lit "Learn" resources and a few code labs (1, 2, 3, 4)
- SSR web components in Ruby with the upcoming Heartml (see this Spicy Web article for context)

UI and usability

Accessibility

MDN - Accessibility
Responsible Web Applications
web.dev - Learn Accessibility (among their other courses)
In Rails: Accessibility is a Requirement, Accessible by Default

Front-end practice

Hotwire

Community and news:
Basics:
- What is the difference between Turbo and Stimulus, and what exactly is Hotwire?
- Hotwire.io (better than the official docs site)
- Write Software, Well - A Brief Introduction to Hotwire
- Write Software, Well - You Don't Need Rails to Start Using Hotwire
- Write Software, Well - Turbo Streams: How They Work and Differ From Turbo Frames
- Evil Martians talk and blog post
- Turbo Rails Tutorial
- David Colby - Turbo Rails 101
- Hotwire Handbook, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- 30 days of Hotwire tips
- Andrea Fomera - Learn Hotwire by Building a Forum
- David Colby - Hotwired ATS: Modern, full-stack Rails development
- Hotwire Cases
- Turbo Music Drive app demonstrating upcoming features of Turbo 8
- Turbo 8 in 8 minutes
Screencasts and blogs:
- Mix & Go screencasts on Hotwire
- SupeRails screencasts on Hotwire
- Rapid Ruby screencasts on Hotwire
- SupeRails blog which includes even more Hotwire tips.
- David Colby's blog
- 💲Andrea Fomera - Learn Hotwire by Building a Calendar
Examples and snippets:
- Hotwire examples from Thoughtbot
- Better Stimulus
- Stimulus-Use
- Stimulus Components for inspiration
Hotwire extensions:
Multi-platform:
- 💲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.
- htmz: like htmx but simpler.

Other Ruby for the front end

Phlex: view templates
Glimmer DSL for Web: an entire front-end framework
Heartml: SSR web components with Ruby

Expanding my horizons

Be a mentor:
- Exercism
- First Ruby Friend
Career advancement:
Computer science:
- 💲Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
- NandGame
- CircuitVerse
- From Nand to Tetris: Part 1, Part 2
- 💲Data Structures and Algorithms in Java
- 💲The Algorithm Design Manual plus lecture videos
- 💲Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces
- 💲Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
- Crafting Interpreters
Coding challenges:
- Advent of Code
Design patterns:
- 💲Head First Design Patterns
- Refactoring.Guru
- thoughtbot - Ruby Science (or EPUB/PDF)
Monitoring:
- 💲Practical Monitoring
- 💲Observability Engineering
Documentation:
- Divio Documentation System (a.k.a. Diataxis)
Explore other Ruby implementations:
- Natalie (WIP, compiles to C++)
Learn Crystal: Whenever you need to make an isolated bit of Ruby code run faster than Ruby can run, porting it to Crystal is easy because they're so similar.
- Crystal for Rubyists (doc page)
- Crystal for Rubyists (book)
- Exercism - Crystal
- Crystal Koans
- Learn how to offload CPU-intensive tasks from a Ruby app into Crystal. There are several approaches (1, 2, 3, 4).
- Make a performance-intensive game/toy in Crystal using Raylib or SFML, possibly with the Chipmunk physics library.
Learn functional programming
- My list "Learn functional programming"

Games in Ruby

Ruby game libraries:
- 💲DragonRuby Game Toolkit is my recommendation because it has the liveliest community, and all the resources below are for DragonRuby. You may qualify for a free license (see "Free Unrestricted License" on the homepage), and the creators regularly give it away for free during game jams and other special occasions.
- Gamefic is for building text-based adventure games and interactive fiction. See Getting Started and examples.
- Gosu
- MiniGL
- Ruby 2D
- Taylor
DragonRuby tutorials:
DragonRuby community, reference, tools:
- Discord server
- Docs
- Zif
- Dragon Riders Community
- DragonRuby Treasure, a collection of games made with DragonRuby.

Ruby media

Blogs

There are lots more out there; these are just my favorites.

"Let's build" screencasts

These are series using at least Rails 7.

Topical screencasts

Streams

Podcasts

Bike Shed
Code and the Coding Coders who Code it
Code with Jason
Friendly Show
Fullstack Ruby
IndieRails
Maintainable
Rails Changelog
Remote Ruby
Rooftop Ruby
Rubber Duck Dev Show
Ruby for All
Ruby on Rails Podcast, especially starting at episode 372 went they went independent, brought on co-hosts, and hired an editor.
Ruby Rogues
Tightly Coupled Book Club
YAGNI

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 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

Without further ado…

Small codebases: Less than 50k lines of Ruby code.
- github.com/onerinas/whatwentwelltoday. <2k lines. An app to share daily positivity.
- github.com/krschacht/37signals-rails-code. <2k lines. Extracts from the Basecamp and Hey codebases.
- github.com/nshki/naisho. <2k lines. Send personal data deletion request emails to hundreds of data brokers at once.
- github.com/carsoncole/workypad. 2k lines. App for managing job prospecting.
- once.com/writebook. 3k lines. App for publishing books to the web.
- github.com/ChaelCodes/MeetAnotherDay. 4k lines. Helps you find and meet up with your friends at conferences.
- github.com/SpinaCMS/Spina. 5k lines. CMS (Content Management System).
- github.com/docusealco/docuseal. 6k lines. Open source DocuSign alternative.
- github.com/codetriage/codetriage. 6k lines. Issue tracker for open-source projects.
- github.com/maybe-finance/maybe. 8k lines. Personal finance app.
- github.com/demingfactor/calagator. 9k lines. Community calendar platform.
- github.com/joemasilotti/railsdevs.com. 12k lines. The reverse job board for Ruby on Rails developers.
- github.com/RailsEventStore/ecommerce. 12k lines. Example app showing DDD (Domain-Driven Design), CQRS, and Event Sourcing.
- github.com/AllYourBot/hostedgpt. 12k lines. Self-hosted ChatGPT alternative.
- github.com/TheOdinProject/theodinproject. 12k lines. Main website for The Odin Project web development learning platform.
- github.com/lobsters/lobsters. 13k lines. Hacker News clone.
- github.com/thoughtbot/upcase. 14k lines. Learning platform for developers.
- github.com/CircuitVerse/CircuitVerse. 15k lines. Digital logic circuit simulator. Has a Vue.js front end.
- github.com/houndci/hound. 14k lines. Automated code review for GitHub PRs.
- github.com/chicago-tool-library/circulate. 17k lines. A lending library management system.
- github.com/rubyforgood/pet-rescue. 19k lines. Connects adopters/fosters with pets.
- github.com/ifmeorg/ifme. 21k lines. Mental health communication web app to share experiences with loved ones.
- github.com/openSUSE/osem. 25k lines. Event management tool tailored to Free and Open Source Software conferences.
- github.com/feedbin/feedbin. 25k lines. RSS reader.
- github.com/rubygems/rubygems.org. 26k lines. Where Ruby gems are hosted.
- github.com/huginn/huginn. 36k lines. Web task automation.
- github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms. 36k lines. CMS (Content Management System).
- github.com/rubyforgood/casa. 37k lines. Volunteer management system for the nonprofit CASA.
- github.com/rubyforgood/human-essentials. 39k lines. An inventory management system for essentials supply banks.
- github.com/SumOfUs/Champaign. 39k lines. Digital campaigning platform. A Rails app generator.
Larger codebases: More than 50k lines of Ruby code.
- github.com/WikiEducationFoundation/WikiEduDashboard. 50k lines. Wikipedia course dashboard system. Has a React front end.
- github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot. 56k lines. Customer engagement suite. Has a Vue.js front end.
- 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/redmine/redmine. 117k lines. Project management app.
- github.com/alphagov/whitehall. 117k lines. Publishes government content on gov.uk.
- github.com/zammad/zammad. 250k lines. Helpdesk/customer support system.
- 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/opf/openproject. 368k lines. Project management software.
- 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. Uses Vue.js on the front end. Has great docs on architecture.

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