Advanced Ruby & Rails books

This is the sequel to my Best way to learn Ruby & Rails post, if you’re new (or fairly new) to Ruby or Rails, read that first. In this post we look at books that help to get you from intermediate level to pro, although you’ll have to bear with me as this is currently my own journey too – and so this post will probably get edited, re-edited often (mainly to change the order of books).

I’m posting this up now because I extracted Metaprograming Ruby out of the Best way to learn Ruby & Rails post – as I felt it was probably a bit too advanced for it, and so need a place for it! I’ll keep adding to this post as and when I cover new material.

I’ve split it into two sections, Advanced Ruby Books, and Advanced Rails books, so you can pick and choose what you want to read when.

ADVANCED RUBY BOOKS

Metaprogramming Ruby

Metaprogramming Ruby is exceptionally well written, and I love the style the authors have adopted for this book. You follow the journey of a junior Ruby programmer who’s just started a new job, and gets paired up with a far more experienced Rubyist. This makes for a great backdrop to slip in questions and answers at all the right moments – genius!

Metaprogramming Ruby is an essential purchase, because it goes deep into some of Ruby’s coolest tricks, and although some of the other books cover Metaprogramming too, this one concentrates on it from start to finish – and when it comes to metagprogramming, a little goes a long way 😉 Grab it from here.

ADVANCED RAILS BOOKS

Rails Recipes: Rails 3 Edition

I’m only 20% through this book and like it a lot already! I’ll update this post when I’ve read it all but just wanted to include it now so this post isn’t too bare!

Check back often for updates, and if you have any book recommendations please let me know.