Documentation

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Getting Started

The Official FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

Ruby Koans walks you along the path to enlightenment in order to learn Ruby. The goal is to learn the Ruby language, syntax, structure, and some common functions and libraries. We also teach you culture.

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is an unconventional but interesting book that will teach you Ruby through stories, wit, and comics. Originally created by why the lucky stiff, this guide remains a classic for Ruby learners.

Ruby Essentials is free on-line book designed to provide a concise and easy to follow guide to learning Ruby.

Learn to Program is a wonderful little tutorial by Chris Pine for programming newbies. If you don’t know how to program, start here.

Learn Ruby the Hard Way is a very good set of exercises with explanations that guide you from the absolute basics of Ruby all the way to OOP and web development.

Tutorialspoint is a popular online learning platform for various technical and non-technical subjects, with their Ruby course walking you though both the basic and advanced aspects of Ruby.

GeeksForGeeks is another online learning platform specializing in computer science with a strong emphasis on enhancing coding skills and knowledge. Their Ruby course has a plethora of information ranging from complete beginner to advanced.

Manuals

Programming Ruby is the seminal work on Ruby in English, this first edition of the Pragmatic Programmer's book is available for free online.

The Ruby Programming Wikibook is a free online manual with beginner and intermediate content plus a thorough language reference.

Reference Documentation

The Official API Documentation for different versions including the currently unreleased (trunk) version.

Ruby Core Reference is pulled straight from the source code using RDoc, this reference work documents all of the core classes and modules (like String, Array, Symbol, etc…).

Ruby Standard Library Reference is also pulled from the source code using RDoc, this reference work documents the standard library.

Ruby C API Reference is the official introduction to Ruby’s C API. Great if you want to write C extensions or contribute to Ruby’s development.

RubyDoc.info is the one-stop web site for reference documentation about Ruby gems and GitHub-hosted Ruby projects.

Ruby & Rails Searchable API Docs is the Rails and Ruby documentation with smart searching.

APIdock contains Ruby, Rails and RSpec documentation with users’ notes.

RubyAPI.org allows you to easily find and browse Ruby classes, modules, and methods.

Ruby-doc.org maintains a comprehensive list of English documentation sources.

Editors and IDEs

While Ruby can be coded with your operating system's default editor, is is far more effective to code in a source code editor with Ruby support (e.g. syntax-highlighting, file browsing) or an integrated development environment with advanced features (e.g. code completion, refactoring, testing support).

Here is a list of some those popular tools for Ruby: