Starting up with Ruby
by on Sep.13, 2010, under Ruby and Rails
Introduction to Ruby
Ruby is said to be the beautiful and artful programming language created by Yukihiro. it is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-programming. Yokihiro created ruby because he wanted a scripting language that was powerful than perl and more object oriented than Python. Ruby is one of the easiest programming language in the world, you can do any kind of complex programming at ease.
an example: creating a loop to print a string 10 times is so simple as
10.times {puts “string”}
that was easy isn’t it? give it a Try, it helps even if you want to work with Rails (yes Ruby on Rails)
Few people asked me to write some tutorials, to help them get started with ruby and when i thought of writing it, found a lot of resources already available online so decided not to create a duplicate post instead compiled a stack of those resources for you guys to get started with.
An Interview with the Creator of Ruby
Yokihiro, creator of ruby and one of the high profile opensource evangelists in Japan talks about the outstanding features of Ruby and why the world needs another scripting language
10 Reasons to Learn Ruby Author has made a very short, modest, humble and incomplete list of few reasons which may entice you to learn Ruby or atleast play with it a little bit.
Learn Ruby Basics
Getting started with Ruby This link points you to the official Ruby Documention where you can find manuals, tutorials and references that will come in handy when you feel like coding in Ruby. This helps you get started with Ruby quickly
Start with the Basics This is an introductory guide which was originally written in japanese by matz. This English Translated version is maintained by the rubyist.net webmaster, they also have documentations for other programming languages like python,perl, etc..
Lets Learn Ruby Fast This Tutorial is intended for people who prefer learning things faster(maybe in 30mins or 1hr). All the major concepts of Ruby is explained practically with the help of short and simple examples. Check this out and try writing your own script, start with a simple one.
Core Ruby Programming the Ruby Study Notes is a step-by-step tutorial to programming in Ruby and you can follow it page by page, reading the text and running the sample programs. there are no large applications here – just small, self-contained sample programs.you can also join satish talims rubylearning classes online
Ruby Quiz: once you get your feet wet, you might want to check out the Ruby Quiz archives. there are over 150 small programming challenges that you can try to solve using Ruby. they also have an active mailing list where they post new challenges every week, join them for interactive learning
Ruby for Java ProgrammersIf you are a Java programmer thinking of learning ruby, you should check this out. in this Presentation Jim brings out many important differences between Java and Ruby, and this can really help you avoid mistakes that many Java programmers make when transitioning to Ruby.
Ruby Books
The following books are, in our opinion, the best & Freely available online books for the aspiring Ruby Geeks to check out.. All it contains is pure Ruby
The PixAxe Book This book has been the gold standard of Ruby books for years, and is a must have for ruby programmers. it has both a descriptive section and a reference section. Many poeple have found this book to be very informative and they consider this one to be the first step to learning Ruby, though it doesn’t have excercises for you to practice with..it doesn’t just walk you through the details, dos and don’ts of the programming language, but it allows the reader to grasp the practice of the “Ruby way” of doing things. and it’s a clean, elegant, yet powerful way!
Mr.Neighborly’s Humble little Ruby Book This book will help you learn more in 45 minutes than you will learn in 4 hours with any other book. seriously, if you want to learn ruby start here. This will quickly teach you the basics. the examples are very good and the obscure reference to the band mewithoutyou is a plus!
Learn to Program (Ruby) Chris Pine explains what programming is with very simple words and metaphores, ones that everyone can understand. he doesn’t overwhelm you with complex concepts or tools and dives very progressively into the programming universe, chosing concrete code samples. the choice of Ruby is simply accurate : intuitive & powerful object language, no fancy IDE, just a notepad and a command line and you’ll see the first results after reading the first pages of this book.
Ruby Programming Wiki This is a complete guide to learning Ruby which is available online for free, in the form of wiki. People who’re used to reading Documentations from wiki’s might find this really helpful.
Practical Learning
PLEAC for those who prefer learning things the practical way. This link points to the PLEAC project in sourceforge which contains codes explaining all the basic concepts of the programming. and not only Ruby, the PLEAC project includes more programming languages such as Python,Perl..etc. just check out the codes and learn
Hope the above resources helps you get started. even if you want to Learn Rails, Learning Ruby helps a lot so just start with Ruby. I will do more posts on Ruby and Rails in future, so stay tuned to GeexHQ.com. Feel free to share your thoughts on Ruby below
before Concluding, here is a warning given to people who have decided to learn/try the Ruby Programming Do Not Learn Ruby
This post is tagged code, programming, rails, ruby
