From: arnuld fraser Date: 2006-01-16T19:26:59+09:00 Subject: only 1 question about RUBY from newbie ------=_Part_3133_29684520.1137407206585 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline hello everyone, my name is "arnuld". I have only a very small question regarding RUBY. I a= m asking since i am not mature programmer. I will be as brief as i can in explaning my problem.here is my MAIN-question: -- Can a newbie understand the RUBY when everyone knows RUBY is the PURE Object-Oriented-language? -- before you answer this question please know my little-programming-history & some more so that your answer can be personalised according to my mental-level & my needs. here are the points: 1. I was a "sales-man" working with the Standard-Chartered Bank's personal-loan branch. I also sold Eureka-Forbes water purifiers.but i failed at both. i think the reason was i never loved my job. i hated it. I also tried call-center, as you know INDIA is drawing a large part of call-center industry towards itself. i failed there. i also tried hotel job both as a waiter & as a front-office executive but also failed there. also i have only 56% markes in my Bachelor of Science (with computer applications).Inspite of a computer based degree i do know any programming languages. worse even after completing my graduation i did not know that a computer runs on an operatin= g system instead i thought it runs on WINDOWS and there is nothing else to ru= n computers & here is more i have some letters and letters like C, C++, HTML, DHTML, BASIC, Fundamentals of JAVA, RDBMS onto my certificate, hence I am a jobless person today. i failed everywhere and i always believed i should not have failed. but there are reasons behin= d this. now i am a completely different person. I entered into programming only for the "love of programming". love has power. love has intimacy. I feel intimacy with programming and i felt it most intense when i see the syntax of RUBY. sometimes my family members found me sleeping on the chair in the front of my computer (a very few times it happened). I do not know what exactly is that but what i know for certain is that it all started wit= h movie "HACKERS" that i watched on HBO. anyway i do not want to waste your time, we can talk about it in another article, right now lets get backto th= e point -> newbie wants to learn RUBY. 2. I am not a pure newbie, I read the following books: a.) "How to think like a computer scientist - learning with python" - by Allen B. Downey, Jeffrey Elkner and Chris Meyers. I understood 85% of the book, this was the 1st book i pursued and i was just confused when i came to the chapters on 'classes & objects', 'queues' & 'trees'. then = i left the book. but even then i read those chapters again and again 3-4 times and got an idea about Object-Oriented programming and even if its difficult i liked it. b.) "Learning to programme" a tutorial - by Alan Gauld did not read much here as i hated his style of mixing VB, JAVA & PYTHON. c.) "Non-Programmers tutorial" - by Josh-Cogliati. again based on python. understood and solved every exercise of it. d.) "An introduction to programming in Emacs-LISP" by Robert. J Chassell= . (from GNU-press) a great book on how my favourite text edito= r "GNU Emacs" is implemented. Understood every part of it but stopped reading in the miidle because i found something more-powerfull & more-interesting, that is next book. e.) "How to design programes" - MITpress (@htdp.org) this was the book because of which i left my favourite GNU-press book. i am still reading it even when i am writing this very email. I fell in love with this book too as this book has solved all of problems i was facing with programming from the very beginning . I have just finished the 1st part of the book and will complete it in next 3-3.5 months. solved 98% of the exercises untill current reading.It uses SCHEME language to teach how to desigh programs. In the meantime i also learned "GNU project", "A brief history of hackerdom", free-softwares & open-soure revolution. After all of this I completely abondoned proprietary-softwares.I will prefer to die rather than working on proprietary-products. presently i am writing this email in GNU Emacs on debian "sarge". Now you have seen my mental-level on how much i understand things, how much i do not & either death or Open-Source. Now this time after i will finish HTDP i want to go again differently (pragmatic), that is the first reason o= f choosing RUBY. 2nd is "love", same as i have with programming. at the time when whole world is drowning into PYTHON & C, i don't know why but RUBY is attracting me like a magnet attracts iron. I do not even know one language completely but still I am not able to stop my dreams which contain RUBY syntax. i searched for RUBY books. I selected "programming RUBY - pragmatic programmers guide" by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler, Andy Hunt (2nd edition). I read some reviews @ amazon.com those reviews have put some fear into my min= d about RUBY. 2 of them told me this horrifying thing: -- Being pure object-oriented language, ruby's more complex than perl or python, you must have decent grasp of O-O design,& design patterns to use i= t effectively, and you have to spend time learning how the object model descends from Object, Module, Class classes and Kernel, Comparable, Enumerable modules to know where to find classes/methods referenced.-- now this is thing that i think i will not be able to understand. Does that mean: 1.) A person with little programming knowledge can not learn RUBY? 1.) Does he need to be such an experienced-object-oriented-programmer to understand RUBY? 2.) If it is true then why CHRIS-PINE wrote an introduction to programming using RUBY? It is my MAIN question asked in 3-parts: Can a newbie understand the RUBY when everyone knows RUBY is the PURE Object-Oriented-language? One of my known-persons is living in ENGLAND and he will come back to INDIA in the march-month. I am relatively a poor-newbie, worse even jobless. he asked me to give me the name of the book i intend to by, he will bring brin= g the book here& hence shipment charges can be saved. that way I can save the money i do not have. if i do not give him the name then he will not buy and after this he will come back after 1 year and that's too long. that is why = i am asking this question even when i have 3 months of time to finish the current-book. here are the 3 different paths & i can take one of them: PATH-1. HTDP -> scheme programming-language - by R. Kent Dybvig -> SCHEME based project-work -> -> PYTHON-intro -> PYTHON -advanced -> project -work on python -> RUBY-DOC.org -> -> RUBY-pragmtic-guide by dave thomas -> some project-work on RUBY PATH-2. HTDP -> RUBY-DOC.org -> RUBY-pragmtic-guide by dave thomas -> some project-work on RUBY PATH-3 HTDP-> suggested by YOU One-more REASON of asking for help: by DEC-2006 , i want to start earning and become independent as my father is going to be retired by the end of 2007.right now i am 25. at the same time i also do not wan= t to put myself with wrong programming-language choices. Thanks a lot for having such a patience as my mail went lengthy. may you provide a reasonable answer based on your experience with programming? I will really feel grateful for your help. "arnuld" ------=_Part_3133_29684520.1137407206585--