I would like to share with you a quick review about the lynda.com Ruby course. It is going to be short as there is not much to say about it.
Do It!
Ok, maybe a bit more details. 
The course covers the first steps of someone who is totally new to Ruby but has some basic idea about programming. It explains the story of the language, gives some background information, references and goes through the steps of installation and configuration on the most popular operation systems.
Introduces the user to the object types of Ruby ( Objects, Variables, Integers, Floats, Strings, Arrays, Array methods, Hashes, Symbols, Booleans, Ranges, Constants ), the Conditionals (if, else, elsif, unless, case, loops and iterators ) and shows how to work with code blocks, methods, classes, modules. How to manage files, read from them, write to them, etc.
The final part of the course shows the birth of a Restaurant Finder program. It's pretty simple but covers basically everything what you have learnt through the course.
It's definitely useful to complete this course and my next step probably is to write a small app on my own and go back to follow up on the different videos to make the information really sink in. And simultaneously I move on to the next courses: Ruby on Rails or the basics of programming. You can get a lot for 25 bucks a month if you have the time to use lynda.com .
After getting through the first steps of installing Rails I wanted to jump into deep water but definitely not without a guide. One of the most recommended book to start out with Rails is the Agile Web Development with Rails from Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas and Rails own father David Heinemeier Hansson.
