Learning Rails/Ruby or Node.js?

It's a while that I'm trying to learn Rails/Ruby. As I'm a .Net developer by day, I didn't have enough time to learn/master Rails/Ruby. So learning it happened very slowly for me. During this long time I have more time to think about it twice.

For many reasons I'm getting in doubt that if it is better to learn js (or front end development or even Node.js) instead of Rails/Ruby? By now I have a live project mainly developing in js. This project tell me to learn js because it has immediate benefit for it. As a long term ASP.NET developer I've always feeling that I need to know more about front end development. Knowing just server side is not a good idea for today's software development. Single page applications is on trend for some years now. Even mobile software development is easier if knowing js/HTML5. A mainly js application using HTML5 could do many tasks like a native app.

And the last reason is that in Country's current market trend, Rails/Ruby development has no many fans. Teams and companies prefer to use .Net, Java, PHP and JavaScript. I think being a Rails/Ruby developer is less wanted that being a front end developer, a JavaScript developer or even being a Node.js developer.

Learning Node.js instead of Rails/Ruby has the chance that you can do something in the market with JavaScript while Ruby is a rare wanted skill. Consider that Node.js is more speedy that Rails/Ruby and like Rials is in trend for a few years.

Update: Read article Why The Hell Would I Use Node.js? for getting more information about Node.js.

Books/Resource for learning Ruby/Rails

There is a well known book on Ruby and another one for Rails. Both of them authored/co-authored by Dave Thomas. I thought they are good points to start. I started from “Agile Web Development with Rails 4th edition”. But I found it is a little bit simple for an experienced ASP.NET MVC developer. The book started near everything from base. For example it describes what html.erb files are and how they work. It also describes from scratch what is meaning of MVC and how directory structure is in a Rails projects. While all these information are very helpful but if you have been an ASP.NET MVC developer in past then this book is not suitable for you. Because already you know many of them.


Haven't read “Programming Ruby 4th” yet but I think this would more useful especially if you have no prior experience with Ruby. I believe it's better to start with Rails then when you need more info on Ruby go back and read more on Ruby.


A good resource for learning Ruby/Rails is Rails's official guide. It is more fascinating for web developers with some previous expreinces. Learning by this site is a bit quicker and needs a bit lesser time. It does not start with trivial subjects. It is like a concise reference. One lovely thing about this guide is that it starts database access very soon and has less things about Ruby itself.