Best Books on Ruby on Rails

I was a hard core .Net developer till Nov 2007 until Syed asked to join the ScrumPad team in Code71. I got curious. I started to dig about Ruby on Rails. I visited some of the popular websites written in RoR. Read some tutorials, skimmed through a few books here and there. Within a very short period of time, my initial curiosity turned out to be passion. I have been working in this framework since then and never regretted joining the ScrumPad team.

Today, if someone does a simple Google search for Ruby on Rails they get over 30 million results. Thousands of web applications are written in rails. More and more people are trying to learn RoR. Many books are written and many are in the process of writing. So here I’m going to make a list of 8 best ruby on rails books to read.

Top 8 Ruby On Rails Books

Here are some popular books of ‘Ruby on Rails’ those I came across and recommend you to give a try:

1. Agile Web Development with Rails 7 By Sam Ruby and Dave Thomas

Agile Web Development with Rails is probably the bible of Ruby on Rails development. Since the beginning of Ruby on Rails development, this book has been a guide for most developers. It is still regarded highly by professionals all around the world. It is a comprehensive book to develop web applications with Rails. This book was developed by consulting the core team of Rails and has been evolving with it from the beginning. An absolute must for people who are starting to learn RoR.

2. Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby  by Sandi Metz

Sandi Metz is one of the most revered authors and engineers in the Ruby community. Her ability to explain complex topics in simple terms is uncanny. Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) contains advanced levels of programming knowledge but written in a way that a beginner can read and understand the contents.

POODR will teach you the fundamental tenets of object-oriented programming with topics such as how to be a professional duck typer or build web apps efficiently, and many more. For people of intermediate or advanced developers, this book will help you to write maintainable and agile, and flexible object-oriented designs in Ruby.

3. Ruby on Rails Tutorial (6th Edition) by Michael Hartl

Ruby on Rails Tutorial is one of the leading books on the introduction to web development using Rails. The book’s easy language helps beginners or hands-on learners to learn web development with little difficulty. Although the book specifically uses Rails, its focus remains on teaching how web apps work. It teaches general skills that are useful to understand the core of web application development. It is generally regarded highly by the Ruby community as a beginner-friendly and comprehensive book for learning Rails.

4. Programming Ruby 3.3: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide (5th Edition) by Dave Thomas and Noel Rappin

Programming Ruby 3.3 is a book that can help every level of engineers. From beginners to advanced-level of engineers find Programming Ruby 3.3 helpful in their pursuit of becoming more efficient in their work. This book contains the new changed syntax and semantics that were introduced with Ruby 3.3. It also included new features such as YJIT, Tractors, pattern matching, and more. Programming Ruby 3.3 is a guide that will help you today and in the future..

5. Sustainable Web Development with Rails by David B. Copeland

David Copeland goes a long way to describe and explain the reason behind each tip in his book Sustainable Web Development with Rails. One very unique aspect of the book is that the writer does not impose his view on the reader. Rather, he encourages the reader to decide for themselves if they want to incorporate the tips from the book into their coding. It helps to learn to get the best out of Ruby on Rails 7, cleanly and efficiently. This 450-page book is filled with tips that have been tested and applied in real-world systems for years. A no-brainer recommendation for RoR developers.

6. The Rails 7 Way by Obie Fernandez, Lucas Dohmen, and Tom Henrik Aadland

The Rails 7 Way is a heavily refactored and updated edition of its predecessors. It includes the entire Rails 7 APIs, design approaches, libraries, and more. It includes new features introduced by Rails 7 such as Hotwire, new ActiveRecord attributes and methods, strict loading, and many more. The Rails 7 Way is a guide for intermediate and advanced-level engineers as this book will surely help you write more efficient code.  

7. Modern Front-End Development for Rails (2nd Edition) by Noel Rappin

Noel Rappin’s expertise on Ruby on Rails is well known in the Ruby community. His multiple books on Rails development are well acclaimed by all. Modern Front-End Development for Rails is not unlike his other works. It is a comprehensive guide for those who work on the front-end development of projects. Latest Rails tools such as Hotwire, Turbo, React, and Stimulus are explained thoroughly by the author. Engineers who work in the front-end can hugely benefit by reading this piece of Rappin’s work.

8. Metaprogramming Ruby 2: Program Like the Ruby Pros by Paolo Perrotta

Metaprogramming Ruby 2 was published back in 2014 and it is still relevant today. It is filled with pragmatic examples of real-world metaprogramming and different challenges for you to test your expertise on metaprogramming concepts. The metaprogramming principles in this book are timeless and they align very well with the capabilities of Ruby 3.3. Even the techniques of Rails programming are broadly applicable to Rails 7/8. This book will surely help an engineer to improve their coding by enhancing elegance and flexibility.

Ruby on Rails is one of the most dynamic frameworks and it is still growing rapidly. RoR has a large and active community that is constantly growing and sharing knowledge. It is a mature and stable network that is well-tested and has a lot of best practices. The scope of work in RoR is immense and with AI in our palms, engineers can perform wonders. 

So, if you do not know Ruby on Rails, this is the time to learn it.

If you already know it, enhance your knowledge.

Reading some of the books above will definitely be helpful. It will help you to write beautiful code, spur productivity, and dare I say, make you happy.

Contributor: Fuad Bin Omar, COO, Nascenia