If you followed along in part 1 of this article, you will have downloaded and installed Netbeans 6 to get a complete Ruby development environment. You should also have prototyped a web design idea, added some dynamic code to it, and got cosy with Ruby by implementing a small standalone application.

In this article, we’ll learn a few more techniques to help you build the next big thing for the web.

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I own several books on Rails, all of them very well written and pleasant to read. But there’s a big difference between reading a book and knowing & learning a platform. You have to code in that platform, you have to first build something trivial, and then build at least one thing that’s non-trivial. Only then do you start to become intimately familiar with a platform’s conventions, the APIs and its general approach to problem solving.

With that in mind, I present a basic guide to how I learnt Ruby on Rails at a steady pace and without feeling overwhelmed by its enormity.

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