Cool Ruby tutorial

For a quick, fun Ruby tutorial, check out http://tryruby.hobix.com, but be sure you move quickly! The session will time out if you are idle for more than 2 minutes. After that, you'll have to start over again from the beginning.

My first program

Well, I didn't have to set up my environment because my geek husband beat me to the punch, on all three of our computers! So, I got to go straight to coding. Today I actually wrote my very first ruby program. It took some playing with irb to understand it (and I still have a long way to go, I think), but here's what happened:

irb(main):001:0> d= Dir.new(".")
=> #
irb(main):002:0> d.each {|name| puts "#{name}"}
.
..
2005-08-06 110530 DSCF0726.JPG
2005-08-06 110540 DSCF0727.JPG
2005-08-06 110546 DSCF0728.JPG
2005-08-06 110608 DSCF0729.JPG
2005-08-06 110624 DSCF0730.JPG
=> #
irb(main):003:0>

Woohoo - a directory listing! I'm really on my way now. Of course, I quickly discovered that

irb(main):001:0> Dir.foreach(".") {|x| puts "#{x}"}

does the same thing. Okay, so now I get class methods vs. instance methods. Ahem, moving right along...

I've got my bible

Well, when I tell my husband I'm excited, he responds! He immediately raced off to the bookstore and bought me my very own (except when he's reading it, anyway) Second Edition PickAxe book, more formally known as Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, by Dave Thomas. Just reading the first two pages of quotes about Ruby from developers has me giddy. I am now convinced that Ruby can save the world. If I can learn it, maybe I can help.

I'm so excited

Well, the first thing to do was find out where to start. A Google search quickly revealed what appeared to be some extremely useful sources:

Ruby Home Page

Ruby Central

"Programming Ruby" online book

Ruby Tutorial

After poking around for just a few minutes, I find am looking forward to this project more than I had previously anticipated. Phil Tomson's article, Why You Might Want to Try Ruby has definitely piqued my interest. Tonight I said to my husband words I never thought I'd hear myself say -- "I read an article on Freshmeat and I'm pretty excited." (Fortunately, he's way geekier than I am, so he understands.)

Ruby Newbie Launch

First, a little history... Many years ago (OK, not that many), I was a successful computer programmer. Device drivers in C, mostly. I was literate in x86 assembly and C++ and could produce a functional smattering of SQL, Perl, and HTML. Then I had children.

Five years, two children, and one new career later (see my other blog at http://www.LaurieThompson.com), I wanted to do more with my life (no, I guess that just wasn't enough). I'd been hearing about Ruby from my geeky husband, so I decided to see if this old dog could learn some new tricks. This blog is intended to be a chronicle of my attempts to rediscover my inner geek by teaching myself Ruby. Stay tuned if you dare, or should I say care.