The reason I like the David Black book is that it gives you a better understanding of the Ruby language itself and how it provides a lot of the magic behind rails. You can use rails without knowing too much Ruby, as Rails is almost like a DSL itself, but to be really proficient, you will need to gain a deeper understanding of Ruby the language.
To learn Ruby I'm using Learning Ruby by Michael Fitzgerald. It's very new and fairly short (238 pages). [ June 20, 2007: Message edited by: Alex Lewis ]
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