From: Markus Jais <info@...>
Date: 2001-12-22T00:34:13+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29234] Re: Some Questions from a Newbie (no programming experience)


>  1. Is ruby a good thing to start learning programming even with
> nearly no knowledge

ruby is a quite simple language compared to Perl or C++.
but there is not very much documentation for beginners as far as I know.
but this shouldn't scare you.
check you 
http://www.rubycentral.com
there you find a complete online version of a very good ruby book
(which you can also buy in printed form)

try to understand what's in that book and if you have any question just 
post them to this list.


> 
>  2. How far is the development of something like Tkinter-ruby
> (i read here also about some flaws of Tkinter and i read about
> the comfort using  wxPython - and that theming like in java
> swing would be better) so that i can start to work and learn
> under windows 2000 and be able to run my app later an linux too.

there is some documentation for ruby/tk is the book mentioned before.
as far as I know there are no ruby-bindings for wxwindows.

> 
>  3. Are there enough documentation and tutorials online even for a
> no-experience-programmer
> 

see above!


>  4. Is it true that learning ruby will help a lot for learning c++
> later.
> 

some concepts are similar and some keywords. like classes,
private, public and protected data.

but in fact c++ is an entirely different beast. I learned Ruby after
C++ and I do not want to use C++ anymore when I can use Ruby.
but because Ruby is objectoriented you can learn a lot about 
object-oriented programming which can be very helpful later for C++.


I think you should definitely give Ruby a try.
maybe you should also check out Python and then you can compare
these too languages and decide which one you like more.
It never hurts to know more languages.

I know both Python and Ruby and I use both and I like both.

markus