From: Chris Carter Date: 2007-02-06T12:13:25+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby Newbie Advice. On 2/5/07, Samantha wrote: > On 2/5/07, Jeff Barczewski wrote: > > > > > > Samantha, > > > > Welcome to Ruby! You'll find one of the finest developer communities I've > > even known. So when you get stuck, feel free to drop an email on the wire, > > there seems to always be someone out there to help. > > > Thanks so much, Jeff! That's exactly what I've gathered thus far. > > Gentoo Linux, that's a beautiful way to go! Makes installing and upgrading > > really wonderful! Good choice! > > > Ya know, I started on Linux back in '99. I mostly played around with RedHat > and ran a dual-boot system. I eventually went to straight Windows, and went > back to having a dual boot in '05. I went to Mandrake, then to Fedora, and > about six months ago decided to take the plunge into Gentoo. I must've had > about six fresh installs in the first few weeks of using it, but I haven't > had to do that in several months now. :) I have found that I've learned > more in the six months of using Gentoo than I had in the several years of > RedHat. I've even gotten brave enough to use ~x86 sources. :) > > > Think of a project you would like to do and then see how you can tackle it > > with Ruby. If you are wanting to build web applications then you have many > > choices in Ruby, the most popular being Rails. For me Ruby and Rails > > brings > > all of the fun back into web application development after having done > > things the hard way for so long (C++, Java, ...) :-) > > > I'm researching stuff on YAML, as was suggested in a previous post and am > going to work on the resume builder. At some point, I'm going to try and > make an interactive one on Rails or maybe using a GUI, so that I can take > input and then spit out a nice looking resume. Now that I have an idea of > what to do, I'm really geeked. > > There are some great books out there, so check some of them out and you just > > might come up with a bunch of ideas. > > > Absolutely. I might be relocating to downstate Michigan (either Metro > Detroit area or Ann Arbor) and I'm pretty stoked that there are user groups > down there. I'm sure I can gleam some ideas there, too. > > Thanks again for the warm welcome! > > > -- > Samantha > > http://www.babygeek.org/ > > "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all > things are at risk." > --Ralph Waldo Emerson > > Hi Samantha! Welcome to ruby! So now you have an idea for a project, and it sounds like a good one too! For support, there is this wonderful list, and there is the #ruby-lang channel on freenode. It is one of the best resources you can find. Just don't be afraid to ask questions, no matter how stupid they sound. The ruby community is pretty darn nice. For you project, I would like to suggest you check out Ruport for generating the pdfs: http://rubyreports.org/ -- Chris Carter concentrationstudios.com brynmawrcs.com