[Ruby] Greetings from Alaska

[Neil Moomey]

Hi everyone.  I signed up for this list because I'm learning Ruby on Rails
and this is closest Ruby group I could find to my home in Anchorage, AK.
I've been programming mostly web stuff full time for about seven years now.
My coworker and I just convinced our boss to let us give Ruby on Rails a
try.  We are currently using ASP.NET with C#.  I also have experience with
PHP, Java and a tad Python.  I work for a small Data warehousing company.
Most of my work is db related.  (MySQL and SQL Server) I was a member of the
SEAJUG list for years and was very impressed with the caliber of programmers
in the Seattle area.  I hope you don't mind if I join in on your
discussions.

My first question is what books and resources would you recommend?  I would
like a quick review of the basics without having to learn programming from
scratch.  I also enjoy learning by example so lots of code is good.

I'm finding Ruby very easy to pick up but Rails is a bit different than
ASP.NET.  In ASP.NET the elements on a web page are treated as objects.
HTML Tables, labels, text boxes etc.  I can set visible to false, change
their properties etc which I found useful.  How is this done in Rails?

What IDE are most people using?

Thanks a bunch.


Neil Moomey