From: boboroshi <athayde@...>
Date: 2005-07-20T00:00:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Rails as a starter language?

Having tried to pick up languages over the years, and only ever really
getting "Hypertalk" (small talk variant in Apple's Hypercard), I found
Ruby (and Rails) to be quite pleasant.

I started with Rails, but rapidly getting to a point where I was making
frustrating (albeit simple) ruby mistakes, I've decided to hit a ruby
book first.

I'm working with the Pragmatic Programmers stuff.

The pickaxe:
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.html

The new Rails book:
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html

I agree with DHH on having a purpose. I have wanted to make a
production pipeline for visual effects work for years now and PHP/MySQL
was causing nothing but ulcers for me as I got into the upper levels of
it. I could do a lot of stuff with PHP, but i spent so much time
writing to and from the database that i just got bored with the lack of
progress.

I've been able to get something roughly running in a few days with some
help from the IRC and email rails communities. But having a project I
had an emotional investment in definitely keeps me fighting with that
one line of code for 2 hours and then doing that little victory dance
that comes from hitting refresh and not getting a syntax error :)