From: Chris Cummer <chris@...>
Date: 2008-01-14T14:42:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Newbie

On 13-Jan-08, at 5:59 AM, Kara Cruz wrote:

> Hi Everybody,
>
> I am en experienced programmer, I have been using VB since I have
> started programming.  I wanted to shift to web programming but I dont
> know which programming language to start with. Somebody told me that
> Ruby is a very good programming language that I can start learning.  I
> have friends and they told me that I start with JAVA instead, Now I am
> asking for your help so that I can be enlightened. Can I be a good web
> programmer or develop my own web application by only learning Ruby? Or
> do i need to start with JAVA and then Ruby?  Please Help

If "web programming" is what you want to do then I recommend starting  
with PHP. Any shared host or current OS install will probably support  
PHP out of the box and writing your first PHP web script can be as  
simple as:

	<?php
		phpinfo();
	?>

 From there you can grow it up and the http://php.net/ documentation  
is excellent.

To get started doing web development in Ruby is a bit more work, in  
fact an optimal way is probably to start with Rails (which does most  
of the heavy lifting for you) and then work backwards from there.  
Also, the online Ruby docs are considerably less beginner-forgiving  
that the PHP docs but then again you have this list ;)

That said, if you want to become enamoured of a language and have a  
ton of fun simply learning further programming for the sake of  
programming, I'd start with Ruby and the command line. A first script  
can be as simple as:

	~/: ruby -e "puts \"Hello world\""

or

	~/: ruby hello_world.rb

I personally would not start with Java. Perhaps later if neither Ruby  
nor PHP touch you, but to start with Java might make you think that  
web programming requires tedium and dreariness before the fun sets in  
and that just ain't so.

Hope that helps,
Chris