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Ruby

Hunter Rancourt
Hunter Rancourt
3,485 Points
Posted by Hunter Rancourt
Hunter Rancourt
3,485 Points

Learn Ruby or Rails Development?

I started the rails development, but I'm now thinking I should have taken Learn Ruby first.

Thoughts? I am almost through the first course in the track. So far it's just been htlm and css so maybe it wouldn't hurt to put that on hold and do the learn ruby track.

Thoughts?

Zachary Green
Zachary Green
16,359 Points
Zachary Green
Zachary Green
16,359 Points

yes ruby is the core of rails but useing rails first will give you some guidance on ruby. i would hop on over to the ruby courses after your done with the rails track

3 Answers

Brandon Barrette
Brandon Barrette
20,485 Points
Brandon Barrette
Brandon Barrette
20,485 Points

You could learn both side by side, but ideally you should know some ruby first or it will be hard to understand what's going on in rails.

mobilesuitcake
mobilesuitcake
7,493 Points
mobilesuitcake
mobilesuitcake
7,493 Points

You should definitely learn Ruby first. Don't fall into the "Rails-first" trap. Don't do the "I'll-learn-both" thing either - that's just going to confuse you. I fell into that trap early on and I got nowhere.

Ruby a programming language. Rails is a web framework that is written in Ruby.

So if you learn Rails first before learning Ruby, I would equate that to learning how to write a novel without learning the English alphabet. You could certainly pull it off, but it's going to be really difficult. Plus, what's the point? Would you hire someone who doesn't possess a very basic understanding of English grammar and syntax to write a novel? Probably not. That would be a poor investment.

Now here me out. What if you learned Ruby first and then Rails? That's like me asking what if you learned English grammar and syntax first before writing that novel? That would be cool, because now that you know basic English grammar and syntax, what would you be able to do? You can write complete sentences, paragraphs, essays, short stories, research papers, speeches, and whatever novel you can dream of. Now that's useful.

The same applies to Ruby. Once you get the gist of Ruby, you can build so much: GUIs, command line apps, interfaces with APIs, and programs that can replace every other word in a text file with "chunky bacon." Even better, since you know the language that runs Rails, you can bend that framework to your will instead of constantly having to rely on tutorial videos all the time to help you guide you.

Ruby first. Rails second.

Jeff Jacobson-Swartfager
Jeff Jacobson-Swartfager
15,419 Points
Jeff Jacobson-Swartfager
Jeff Jacobson-Swartfager
15,419 Points

If you're looking to learn how to make web apps with Ruby, learning Rails is totally fine. It will actually help focus your studies since it makes so many assumptions for you. If you want to build other stuff, you might go for Ruby first.

Either way, learning vanilla Ruby will greatly improve your Rails code. If you're like me, you'll see much more immediate results by learning Rails first. You should take an in-depth look at Ruby sometime later though.