Learn Ruby: a resource list

Hi! This road map has helped me as a self-taught developer. I hope it helps you too.

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Table of contents

• Preliminaries
  • What's the best single learning resource?
  • Why Ruby?
• Basics
  • Front-end basics
  • Ruby basics
  • Rails basics
  • Getting hired
• Foundations
  • SQL and databases
  • Git
• Front end
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Usability
  • Accessibility
  • Web standards
  • Hotwire
• Advanced Ruby and Rails
  • Advanced Ruby
  • Advanced Rails
• Miscellaneous
  • Community
  • Ruby that is not web development
  • Rails codebases to study

Preliminaries

What's the best single learning resource?

I suggest the free Odin Project if you're looking for one resource that can take you from zero to potentially hireable. If you want more variety and more depth on certain topics, keep reading!

Why Ruby?

Initially I looked into full-stack JS, but the JS ecosystem was confusing to me as a solo learner. I found Ruby to be more straightforward and enjoyable.

Basics

Front-end basics

• Learn some HTML, CSS, and JS: The Odin Project - Foundations path or MDN - Learn web development or web.dev - Learn web development.
• 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.
  • Eloquent Ruby, 2nd ed. (beta)
• Guided practice:
  • Exercism - Ruby
  • Advent of Code with other people's Ruby solutions to compare yours to. One way to do this is my Advent of Ruby gem.
• 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 the most straightforward option, but there are Ruby game engines for graphical games.
  • A static site with Bridgetown, which is simpler than building a web app with Rails. Maybe rebuild your blog? Be sure to join the Bridgetown Discord server.

Rails basics

Only books and courses are listed below, but be sure to build things as you learn. I found it most helpful to build a bunch of little throwaway apps and write about each learning experience (1, 2, 3, 4).

• Basics:
  • Getting started with Rails, an interactive quick start.
  • typecraft - Rails New and/or GoRails - Build a Blog with Rails 7 if you like videos.
  • The Odin Project - Rails
• Testing:
  • thoughtbot - Testing Rails or the summary blog post. (In the book, ignore controller specs because they have been superseded by request specs.)
  • 💲Effective Testing with RSpec 3
• Miscellaneous:
  • Beginners Guide to Ruby on Rails Performance
  • 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
• Mentorship:
  • First Ruby Friend where aspiring and first-year developers are connected with a mentor.
  • r/rails. Examples: 1, 2.
• The job search:
  • RubyOnRemote
  • Welcome to the Jungle

Foundations

In addition to the topics below, it's also good to know the basic workings of the Internet and the Web. Resources for that are listed in my "Learn Computer Science" list.

SQL and databases

• SQL Teaching
• SQLBolt
• Select Star SQL
• SQL Practice
• PostgreSQL Exercises
• Next-Level Database Techniques for Developers
• Use the Index, Luke!

Git

• Oh My Git! or Learn Git Branching
• Oh Shit, Git!?! or for more detail, Git Flight Rules
• Git Katas
• The Git Parable

Front end

CSS

• CSS Nouveau
• 💲Every Layout

JavaScript

• Basics:
  • Exploring JavaScript or MDN - JavaScript
  • Modern JavaScript Explained For Dinosaurs plus MDN - import maps
  • What the heck is the event loop anyway?
  • The Modern JavaScript Tutorial - Browser: Document, Events, Interfaces
• Web components:
  • Lit docs
  • Lit - Learn
  • Open Web Components (Lit) - Codelabs and Code Examples
  • Google - From Web Component to Lit Element and Lit for React Developers
  • Explore source code of Heartml Reciprocate, QuietUI, Web Awesome
• Other vanilla JS:
  • Signals: Ryan Carniato explains JavaScript Signals, alien-signals, Preact Signals
  • Declarative HTML binding with Signals
  • nimble-html
• Build your own front-end framework:
  • General: Let's learn how modern JavaScript frameworks work by building one, Frontend framework, 💲Build a Frontend Web Framework
  • React: Implementing React From Scratch, Build your own React, Creating Our Own React From Scratch, Let's build a React from scratch
  • Other frameworks: Building AlpineJS, Create Your Own Vue.js From Scratch, A Hands-on Introduction to Fine-Grained Reactivity and SolidJS: Reactivity to Rendering, Compile Svelte 5 in your head
• TypeScript:
  • Total TypeScript VS Code extension
  • Total TypeScript essentials
  • The TypeScript Handbook
  • The Concise TypeScript Book
  • Execute Program - TypeScript courses
  • Official docs
  • Tackling TypeScript
  • Type Challenges
  • TypeHero
  • Type | Treat 2020, 2021
  • Codeless Code - posts on TypeScript e.g. Higher Kindred Types in TypeScript and Point-free Programming via HKTs
  • TypeScript libraries: TS-Pattern, Zod, type-fest, Effect
  • 💲TypeScript Cookbook
  • 💲Effective TypeScript
  • Google TypeScript Style Guide and TypeScript Style Guide
• New web APIs:
  • View Transitions
  • Speculation Rules
  • Invoker Commands
  • Popover
  • IntersectionObserver

Usability

• Vercel - Web Interface Guidelines
• Laws of UX
• 💲Don't Make Me Think
• 💲The Design of Everyday Things
• Victor Ponamariov - 100 UI/UX Tips
• 💲User Interface Design: A Software Engineering Perspective

Accessibility

• Accessibility Developer Guide
• MDN - Accessibility or web.dev - Learn Accessibility
• Responsible Web Applications
• 💲Inclusive Components
• RailsConf talks on accessibility
• Examples of accessible components: Deque University Code Library, Scott O'Hara's Accessible Components

Web standards

References for when you want to stick to native Web technologies and patterns.

• Plain Vanilla
• Under-Engineered Patterns
• Stephanie Eckles - SmolCSS
• Stephanie Eckles - Modern CSS Solutions

Hotwire

• News:
  • Hotwire Weekly
• Basics:
  • 💲Master Hotwire
  • 30 days of Hotwire tips
  • Hotwire Cheatsheet
  • Turbo 8 Cheatsheet
  • 💲Hotwire Native for Rails Developers
• Turbo 8:
  • Turbo 8 in 8 minutes
  • A happier happy path in Turbo with morphing
  • Turbo Music Drive app demonstrating upcoming features of Turbo 8, along with accompanying blog posts (pt. 1 on morphing, pt. 2 on view transitions)
• Reference:
  • Hotwire.io (more extensive than the official docs)
  • turbo-rails "Usage" README section
  • thoughtbot - Hotwire examples
  • Betterstimulus
  • Stimulus-Use
  • Stimulus Components

Advanced Ruby and Rails

See also my GitHub star lists for handy Ruby gems.

Advanced Ruby

• Language features:
  • Blended Ruby (WIP)
  • Victor Shepelev (zverok) - The Ruby Reference plus Ruby Changes (covering Ruby 3+). Ruby Evolution is also great.
  • RuboCop performance rules
• Concurrency:
  • Jesse Storimer - Working with Ruby Threads
  • Jesse Storimer - Working with Unix Processes
  • Jesse Storimer - articles: Threads, Not Just for Optimizations, Matz is not a threading guy, Nobody Understands the GIL (parts 1, 2, 3)
  • Prateek Codes - series on concurrency and parallelism
  • JP Camara - series on concurrency, parallelism and asynchronous programming in Ruby
  • Ruby, Ractors, and Lock-Free Data Structures
  • Articles on threads and processes in Ruby: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  • parallel gem
  • concurrent-ruby gem
• Ruby internals:
  • 💲Ruby Under a Microscope (WIP)
  • A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-side

Advanced Rails

• Reference:
  • 💲The Rails 8 Way
  • Rails Guides
  • Rails API docs
• Rails internals:
  • The Rails Companion
  • 💲Noah Gibbs - Rebuilding Rails
• Architecture:
  • 💲Layered Design for Ruby on Rails Applications
  • 💲Maintainable Rails
  • 💲Gradual Modularization for Ruby and Rails and Gusto engineering blog posts on modularity
• Background jobs:
  • Sidekiq wiki
  • How does Sidekiq work?
  • 💲Nate Berkopec - Sidekiq in Practice
• Performance:
  • BigBinary - Scaling Rails series
  • RorVsWild blog is largely about performance
  • 💲Nate Berkopec - The Complete Guide to Rails Performance
  • 💲Nate Berkopec - The Ruby on Rails Performance Apocrypha
  • Mature Optimization Handbook (not Rails-specific)
  • 💲Rails Scales!
• PostgreSQL:
  • Postgres Playground
  • Yeah, Postgres can do that
  • 💲High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails
  • Blog posts on Rails + Postgres: lots on Paweł Urbanek's blog, this one at Honeybadger, this one at thoughtbot.
  • 💲The Art of PostgreSQL
  • 💲PostgreSQL Query Optimization: The Ultimate Guide to Building Efficient Queries
  • PostgreSQL docs
• SQLite:
  • 💲SQLite on Rails
• Deployment:
  • 💲Josef Strzibny - Deployment from Scratch
  • 💲Julia Evans - How Containers Work
  • Ruby on Whales: Dockerizing Ruby and Rails development
  • 💲The Docker Book
  • Using Kamal 2.0 in Production
  • 💲Josef Strzibny - Kamal Handbook
• Miscellaneous:
  • Perfecting Your Rails Forms
  • 💲Frictionless Generators

Miscellaneous

Community

• Awesome Ruby Blogs for blogs, newsletters, podcasts, screencasts, and livestreams
• Bluesky starter packs for Ruby developers
• Discord: Ruby
• Lobsters is not Ruby-specific, but it's a way to widen your horizons and the discussions are of high quality. It's like Hacker News but smaller and more focused on programming.
• Mastodon: Ruby.social
• Reddit: r/ruby and r/rails
• Slack: Ruby on Rails Link

Ruby that is not web development

• 💲DragonRuby Game Toolkit for game development. See their Discord and community site. Other Ruby game libraries: Gosu, Raylib Ruby, MiniGL, Ruby 2D, Taylor, TIC-80
• Gamefic for building text-based games and interactive fiction. See Getting Started and examples.
• SC2AI for StarCraft II botting
• Sonic Pi for live music coding
• Ronin for security development
• Scripting and text processing: Ruby One-Liners Guide, Ruby Regexp, 💲Text Processing with Ruby

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/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/garyharan/fresh plus github.com/garyharan/FreshAppIOS and github.com/garyharan/FreshAppAndroid. 4k lines. Dating app using Hotwire Native.
  • github.com/ChaelCodes/MeetAnotherDay. 4k lines. Helps you find and meet up with your friends at conferences.
  • github.com/SpinaCMS/Spina. 6k lines. CMS (Content Management System).
  • github.com/eigenfocus/eigenfocus. 5k lines. Self-hosted project/time management app.
  • github.com/basecamp/once-campfire. 6k lines. Self-hosted chat application similar to Slack.
  • github.com/codetriage/codetriage. 6k lines. Issue tracker for open-source projects.
  • github.com/demingfactor/calagator. 9k lines. Community calendar platform.
  • github.com/rubyevents/rubyevents. 11k lines. Index of Ruby events and videos.
  • github.com/lookbook-hq/lookbook. 11k lines. UI development environment for Rails apps.
  • github.com/thoughtbot/upcase. 14k lines. Learning platform for developers.
  • github.com/joemasilotti/railsdevs.com. 14k lines. The reverse job board for Ruby on Rails developers.
  • github.com/galahq/gala. 15k lines. Collaborative learning platform.
  • github.com/CircuitVerse/CircuitVerse. 15k lines. Digital logic circuit simulator. Has a Vue.js front end.
  • github.com/docusealco/docuseal. 15k lines. Open source DocuSign alternative.
  • github.com/rubyforgood/homeward-tails. 15k lines. Connects adopters/fosters with pets.
  • github.com/TheOdinProject/theodinproject. 16k lines. Main website for The Odin Project web development learning platform.
  • github.com/AllYourBot/hostedgpt. 16k lines. Self-hosted ChatGPT alternative.
  • github.com/RailsEventStore/ecommerce. 17k lines. Example app showing DDD (Domain-Driven Design), CQRS, and Event Sourcing.
  • github.com/lobsters/lobsters. 18k lines. Hacker News clone.
  • github.com/maybe-finance/maybe. 19k lines. Personal finance app.
  • github.com/rauversion/rauversion. 20k lines. Music platform.
  • github.com/ifmeorg/ifme. 21k lines. Mental health communication web app to share experiences with loved ones.
  • github.com/openSUSE/osem. 24k lines. Event management tool tailored to Free and Open Source Software conferences.
  • github.com/chicago-tool-library/circulate. 26k lines. A lending library management system.
  • github.com/feedbin/feedbin. 31k lines. RSS reader.
  • github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms. 37k lines. CMS (Content Management System).
  • github.com/huginn/huginn. 37k lines. Web task automation.
  • github.com/rubyforgood/casa. 44k lines. Volunteer management system for the nonprofit CASA.
  • github.com/rubyforgood/human-essentials. 47k lines. An inventory management system for essentials supply banks.
• Larger codebases: More than 50k lines of Ruby code.
  • github.com/rubygems/rubygems.org. 56k lines. Where Ruby gems are hosted.
  • github.com/WikiEducationFoundation/WikiEduDashboard. 59k lines. Wikipedia course dashboard system. Has a React front end.
  • github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot. 74k lines. Customer engagement suite. Has a Vue.js front end.
  • github.com/solidusio/solidus. 98k lines. E-commerce platform.
  • github.com/alphagov/whitehall. 110k lines. Publishes government content on gov.uk.
  • github.com/mastodon/mastodon. 117k lines. Like Twitter but self-hosted and federated.
  • github.com/redmine/redmine. 118k lines. Project management app.
  • github.com/forem/forem. 126k lines. Powers the blogging site dev.to. Uses Preact on the front end.
  • github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork. 129k lines. An online marketplace for local food.
  • github.com/decidim/decidim. 294k lines. The participatory democracy framework.
  • github.com/zammad/zammad. 299k lines. Helpdesk/customer support system.
  • github.com/antiwork/gumroad. 323k lines. E-commerce platform.
  • github.com/opf/openproject. 479k lines. Project management software.
  • github.com/discourse/discourse. 514k lines. Discussion forum platform. Has an Ember.js front end.
  • github.com/instructure/canvas-lms. 891k lines. A popular LMS (learning management system).
  • gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab. 3 million lines. Like GitHub but with CI/CD and DevOps features built in. Uses Vue.js on the front end. Has docs on architecture.