Step 1 – Installation

For installation there is no better site then: www.RubyOnRails.org Follow the directions and you should have the rails environment setup in very little time.

Step 2 – IDE

For me, comin from the java world, I need an IDE that helps with syntax as much as possible. This is a bad habbit and the scripting programmers laugh at how much we need an IDE to write software, but to me its just more efficient. There are 2 IDEs I have used and would recomment.

RadRails

This IDE is based on eclipse and has the essential features you would need in an IDE. The only problem is the auto-completion is kind of lacking at this point in time, and to me, autocompletion is a dream to have in an IDE.

JEdit

This is a very basic text editor but it has plugins that will allow it to have autocompletion for ruby code. This is extremely helpful. It also has the ability to have macros/shortcuts to quickly put together commonly used ruby commands. The downside, it does not manage projects very well. There is a plugin to allow you to ‘group’ together files into a ‘project’ but it is nothing like eclipse in the way it creates ‘projects.

As for the winner, you decide.

Step 3 – Tutorials!

For me the best way to learn is to jump right in. There are some really great basic tutorials out there to help get you started. Here is a list of the ones I have learned from myself.

• The Official Wiki. Always a good place to start.
• Rolling with Ruby On Rails. A good beginner tutorial on scaffolding and some basic ajax.
• Really Getting Started in Rails. Another good beginner tutorial
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• And for probably the best tutorial out there, get the book Agile Web Development With Rails. This is the ultimate rails book. If you get this and walk through the example, you will be flying through rails.
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Step 4 – Create

You are on your own for this one. Make Apps, ask questions, learn and grow. I will be creating my own more advanced tutorials as I begin to try to recreate Java apps that I have developed previously into Rails Apps. I want to test how well they do versus eachother in real world examples.

Enjoy and welcome to the world of rails!