The two languages are very similar. What I would really suggest is see which has the more active user group in your area. This is actually how I ended up learni

The two languages are very similar. What I would really suggest is see which has the more active user group in your area. This is actually how I ended up learning ruby. If I had found another user group as active in my area I would probably be coding in that instead. Having someone infront of you to ask dumb questions is amazingly helpful. What resources are best depends on what level of programming experience you are starting with. For Ruby: 0 experience I recommend starting with Learn to Program by Chris Pine Have some experience go straight to Learn Ruby the Hard Way by Zed Shaw After you have some exposure to the ruby language start on rails with the Rails 3 Tutorial by Michael Hartl. It goes step by step through building a twitter clone. Follow the Rails 3 Tutorial with Agile Web Development with Rails. It builds a shopping cart using a different methodology than the Rails 3 tutorial. After that I the classes from code school are pretty awesome and the railscasts by Ryan Bates is the best $9 I spend a month.