When I started off with Ruby I tried reading through some freely available books (including Why's Poignant Guide) but going through the koans was by far the fastest and most effective way to learn Ruby syntax.

There are also Go koans: https://github.com/cdarwin/go-koans

I found reading The Well-Grounded Rubyist and completing the koans to be a good combination. You get an understanding of the underlying concepts of the language as well as experience with the syntax and core classes.

http://www.manning.com/black3/

This is an enjoyable and effective way for getting used to Ruby syntax and some basic TDD concepts. The important point to keep in mind, however, is to try to reflect on each modification that you make, so that you can also learn the language semantics, and make the practice more than just "filling in the blanks".

See also the previous posts of rubykoans:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623619

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308684

Very well done. There's also a Python version: https://github.com/gregmalcolm/python_koans

Coincidentally, we're looking for London based senior, test-driven Ruby devs (contract).

American OK? Would love to move to London from the US.

Is there a chance for remote working?

Your SSL certificate is invalid:

https://koans.heroku.com/

edit:

this works though:

https://koans.herokuapp.com/en

I confirm, google complains.

    NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

    Subject: *.herokuapp.com
    Issuer: DigiCert SHA2 High Assurance Server CA
    Expires on: 19 mai 2017
    Current date: 2 avr. 2015

heroku charges $20 a month to allow a SSL certificate for a custom domain!

Just use Cloudflare. It's free.

Details: https://robots.thoughtbot.com/set-up-cloudflare-free-ssl-on-...

There are some downsides to this approach that are described there.

Ruby Koans are great. Some others along the same idea area:

* https://github.com/JoshCheek/ruby-kickstart

* https://github.com/alexch/learn_ruby

https://rubymonk.com/ is another good one. The theme got a little tiresome after a while but the lessons really forced me to mess around with Ruby in the console. I learned a lot.

A list of koans using different languages - including bash! :

https://github.com/ahmdrefat/awesome-koans/blob/master/koans...

I miss Jim Weirich :(

Love it. It helps me in getting familiar with TDD when I was just starting out to learn Rails.