From: Jeffrey Schwab <jeff@...>
Date: 2006-11-18T12:25:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Nuby transition through "suck" stage??

Thomas Luedeke wrote:
> I once read that in learning Ruby, there is a "suck" stage where it is 
> difficult to accomplish much of anything, followed by a "Wow" stage 
> where the Ruby Nuby "sees the light".
> 
> Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder 
> through the "suck" stage, and achieve the Nirvana of "Wow"?  I'm 
> historically a Unix scripter, haven't spent a lot of time on languages 
> like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather 
> painful.  Any areas to concentrate on??

It helps to have a concrete problem you need to solve.  Do you have any 
somewhat generic task you would like to automate?  Searching files for 
certain kinds of text strings was a good one for me to learn Ruby, 
although I still don't use it as much as I ought.  Processing large 
quantities of files from certain formats to certain other formats served 
a similar role in helping me learn Perl.  What is it you would like to 
achieve with the language?