I’ve been putting myself through a Ruby bootcamp.  Here’s are the steps of my training:

1. Install Ruby and Rails on Mac OS X Snow Leopard
2. Ruby Primer introduction to Ruby basics
3. Quick Reference
4. Ruby on Rails Tutorial comprehensive tutorial that goes through the complete setup from db to web application

While going through the tutorial I found a few issues that I wanted to highlight:

1. The use of the start_form_tag has been deprecated, the correct tag to use is form_tag followed by do e.g. <%=start_form_tag :action=> ‘create’ %> becomes <% form_tag :action=> ‘create’ do %>
2. The use of the end_form_tag has been deprecated, the correct tag to use is end.
3. The error message: syntax error, unexpected kENSURE, expecting $end means that Ruby is trying to ensure that a keyword in this case ‘end’ is being used.
4. redirects_to versus redirect_to the former is a class method and the later is an instance method.