One of the amazing things about Ruby is the Ruby community and the spirit of sharing that I encounter over and over again when interacting with people in the Ruby community. There are many fine books that can help you learn Ruby but there are also great online resources.

Once you feel like you have a basic understanding of the language I’d recommend checking out some of the following resources.

• rubytapas - these are wonderful short screencasts that teach some fundamental feature of Ruby that you probably haven’t encountered before. The explanations are clear. The examples are right on-point. There are a slew of free videos to dive into and its also well worth signing up for $9 a month. A bargain.

• Ruby Rogues Podcast - a ton of past episodes to go through each containing some nugget of Ruby wisdom that will serve you well. Clear your weekend schedule and go through all of them.

• Confreaks.TV and Rails Conference Talks - if you are a Ruby programmer you are going to deal with Rails. Either joyfully or reluctantly but its impossible to avoid. Go to Confreaks.TV. Watch the past Rails Conference talks. Awesome learning experience.

• The Ruby on Rails podcast - more rails but much more than that. Great discussions. I’m really not clear on how these people do the podcasts. Not my talent at all. But I sure appreciate folks that can do it well and this is a great example of a podcast worth listening to.

The other thing that I’d say is that its really important to attend the Ruby conferences and Rails conferences. There are lots of contacts you can make and new techniques you can learn all packed into 3 days at some very nice locations. Definitely try and swing that after absorbing as much online material as you can find. Good luck!