I’ve recently started reading Zed Shaw’s beginner book for Ruby “Learn Ruby the Hard Way.” As the front page suggests it’s a fairly simple and straightforward approach to learning Ruby and despite what the title it’s not that hard to get into and quite interesting. The book assumes you know nothing about programming and has a structured approach, learning through exercises, your own research in study drills and using repetition to gradually introduce new concepts as you go forwards. Also…..the author doesn’t do the thing I HATE the most in beginner books which is to to teach incantations, by which I mean introducing a concept fo a few pages then jumping ahead, never to revisit the subject again and assuming it all married in your mind without any exposition (looking at you Codecademy.)
The blog of Dave 