From: Axel Etzold <AEtzold@...>
Date: 2007-06-17T19:42:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Nervous Nuby Starting Out!

Dear Macrubyist,

welcome to the Ruby language!

> Anybody out there who's patient and willing to give a newby help if
> required?

Many patient people are around on this here ... just post your problem :)


> I'm just starting out considering trying to learn Ruby as a first
> language

There is a very nice tutorial on the web that presupposes almost
no knowledge about computing :

http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/?Chapter=00

It will guide you from the very first beginnings to coding a program
that involves a dinosaur baby's behavior, as it might be observed
in computer games,  so you'll really get a feel of the more complex
things in a very short time.


> Suddenly
> I'm bumping into limitations of Applescript for things I want to do, and
> they're not necessarily to do with hooking apps up (which I know how to
> ask for help for from the mailing list) as much as fairly simple 'unixy'
> things to do with strings, simple XML and regexes, plus the stuff about
> basic program design, flow control &c. 

Well I don't really know too much about Applescript and whether you could
use it to do things you want, but Ruby certainly is able to do all these
things.
For xml parsing, there's Hpricot and there are very nice tutorials about it, also, there
is rio 

http://rio.rubyforge.org/ ,

for i/o processing, which I use very often.
As you go, you'll find that many other packages are distributed
in a nice way as "gems", which you can easily install and work with right away.


> (and regexes and hashes if I can cautiously start to get my head
> round them).

A hash is just a dictionary, that associates a set of keys to some
other set, the set of values. These can be of all kinds:

english_german={'head'=>['Kopf','Haupt','Hydrozephalus'],
'body'=>'Koerper','foot'=>'Fuss',number_of_feet_in_humans=>2}

For Regexps, there is  a nice tutorial here:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ruby.html

Ruby has extensive online documentation,

http://www.rubycentral.com/book/

Personally, I've also liked Hal Fulton's book
"The Ruby Way" with its many examples a great deal.

> Especially if somebody would tell me it's really easy to compile
> from source under Darwin, because the last time I tried to compile from
> source it was in an abortive attempt to learn Linux several years ago,
> with
> several unfriendly problems, and I'm scared.

Ruby should be there right away, if you have OS 10.2 or later.
But it is certainly a good idea to be able to compile something from source, if you want to work with packages .. you can move this to
next week, though.



> -- 
> The (...and where are all those cartoon foxes, anyway? Could do with
> seeing a friendly face...) MacRubyist

You can also learn Ruby from comics - here: http://poignantguide.net/ruby

Best regards,

AQxel 
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