Michael Hartl created the legendary Ruby on Rails Tutorial that helped jumpstart thousands of web development careers. A cofounder and principal author at Learn Enough, Hartl previously earned a Ph.D. in physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is also an alumnus of Harvard University and the world-renowned Y Combinator entrepreneur program.
Praise for Michael Hartl's Books and Videos on Ruby on Rails ""My former company (CD Baby) was one of the first to loudly switch to Ruby on Rails, and then even more loudly switch back to PHP. (Google me to read about the drama.) This book by Michael Hartl came so highly recommended that I had to try it, and the Ruby on RailsTM Tutorial is what I used to switch back to Rails again."" --From the Foreword by Derek Sivers (sivers.org) Formerly: founder of CD Baby; Currently: founder of Thoughts Ltd. ""I started working on a project but didn't quite understand some rails concepts. Needed a good tutorial and found lots of recommendations for @mhartl's rails tutorial . . . and man it's so good. The hype def matches the product."" --Pratik Tamang, https://twitter.com/codingkrazy ""The rails tutorial by @mhartl is the best web dev resource ever written."" --Daniel Gamboa, Product Manager, Figment ""My first programming book was the Ruby on Rails Tutorial from @mhartl. The best part was it taught me general skills to be an effective developer."" --Jack Gray, staknine.com ""Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial book is the #1 (and only, in my opinion) place to start when it comes to books about learning Rails. . . . It's an amazing piece of work and, unusually, walks you through building a Rails app from start to finish with testing. If you want to read just one book and feel like a Rails master by the end of it, pick the Ruby on RailsTM Tutorial."" --Peter Cooper, editor, Ruby Inside ""Michael Hartl's Ruby on RailsTM Tutorial seamlessly taught me about not only Ruby on Rails, but also the underlying Ruby language, HTML, CSS, a bit of JavaScript, and even some SQL--but most importantly it showed me how to build a web application (Twitter) in a short amount of time."" --Mattan Griffel, cofounder & CEO of One Month ""Although I'm a Python/Django developer by trade, I can't stress enough how much this book has helped me. As an undergraduate, completely detached from industry, this book showed me how to use version control, how to write tests, and, most importantly--despite the steep learning curve for setting up and getting stuff running--how the end result of perseverance is extremely gratifying. It made me fall in love with technology all over again. This is the book I direct all my friends to who want to start learning programming/building stuff. Thank you, Michael!"" --Prakhar Srivastav, software engineer, Xcite.com, Kuwait ""It has to be the best-written book of its type I've ever seen, and I can't recommend it enough."" --Daniel Hollands, administrator of Birmingham.IO ""For those wanting to learn Ruby on Rails, Hartl's Ruby on RailsTM Tutorial is (in my opinion) the best way to do it."" --David Young, software developer and author at deepinthecode.com ""This is a great tutorial for a lot of reasons, because aside from just teaching Rails, Hartl is also teaching good development practices."" --Michael Denomy, full-stack web developer ""Without a doubt, the best way I learned Ruby on Rails was by building an actual working app. I used Michael Hartl's Ruby on RailsTM Tutorial, which showed me how to get a very basic Twitter-like app up and running from scratch. I cannot recommend this tutorial enough; getting something up and going fast was key; it beats memorization by a mile."" --James Fend, serial entrepreneur, JamesFend.com ""The book gives you the theory and practice, while the videos focus on showing you in person how it's done. Highly recommended combo."" --Antonio Cangiano, software engineer, IBM ""The author is clearly an expert at the Ruby language and the Rails framework, but more than that, he is a working software engineer who introduces best practices throughout the text."" --Gregory Charles, principal software developer at Fairway Technologies