Reddit mentions of Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning From Novice to Professional)

10000 limit again. Reserving this comment for the Programming section:

PROGRAMMING
Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers
Beginning Python
The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)
Shell Scripting
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible, Second Edition
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
sed & awk (2nd Edition)
The Ruby Programming Language
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example
Agile Web Development with Rails
Automating Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows PowerShell 2.0
Pragmatic Guide to Subversion
Programming Perl
C++ Primer Plus
The AWK Programming Language thanks sjhill
Modern Perl thanks three18ti
High-Order Perl thanks three18ti
The Art of Scalability thanks mr_chip
Scalability Rules thanks mr_chip
Continuous Delivery thanks mr_chip
The Varnish Book thanks mr_chip

You should definitely learn Ruby properly before Rails. I recommend you Beginning Ruby. You can also try Learn Ruby Hardway. After you really master basics of ruby language. I recommend you Eloquent Ruby, it's great book of best practices in Ruby.

My primary books were Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional and Beginning Rails 3. Not to say these are the best and only books you'll ever need, but they are what I wanted in a text book; thorough, step by step application build in each one, online updates, code examples available for download. Really a great resource to get me started and I felt confident in my abilities by the end. At the very least I could understand what was happening in a system and be knowledgeable enough to know how to ask for help from other developers.
Because I had strength in HTML, I dabbled in a php book (PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice ) as well that helped me understand some other core programming concepts.

I've got a few I've been reading for a while now:

• Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional - I've held off on this a bit because I'll never use Ruby at my current job, but would still like to learn.
  
• PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practices - I've been reading this book for over a year. One, I really want to take the time to read it because it's a bit heavier concepts than most web dev books. Two, my current job will never need anything this complex.

I like Learn to Program by Chris Pine. but what really made me understand Classes, Methods etc was Beginning Ruby