From: Dhushyanth Ramasamy Date: 2009-01-09T15:17:35+09:00 Subject: How Ruby Well i read the posts on "Why ruby" now I wanted to know "How Ruby": I recently chanced upon this forum while on internet. I too have recently taken an interest in learning Ruby. The thing is I get sort of overwhelmed when I see any of the forum pages( in ruby-central or any other ruby forum). It's as if I haven't learned a thing. All the talk say for example about testing, and about something called Merb made me introspect(This site in particular since I want to participate in Google summer of code or at least be capable of participating: http://rubycentral.com/projects/gsoc-2008/ideas-for-gsoc-2008) - Can I really master this language? I feel that if I do learn a language I should be able to do anything with it and not just write maze solving programs, algorithmic problems, or some competition challenges. Currently I have experience only in c++ coding( I have done a crash course in Java though, but still feel that I am not expert enough) that too only in an IDE (the kind of old stuff which they teach at our school). I daresay I am best in my batch but I still feel I know nothing when I go out and look into the big bad web. I mean for example, I am still stuck to whereas I found out that it is outdated and changed to just simply with use of std::namespace etc. I still use arrays and don't know about vectors and hashes. So I would not like to repeat my mistakes when I start anew with Ruby. I just want to be at the leading edge along with the developers. I want to be at the forefront and not just be a simple namesake programmer who knows nothing about the "real world". I would very much like to remedy this problem. This fear has raised doubts in my head: Is programming really for me?, Will I always be a noob?.....The thing is there isn't someone to teach you how to be an expert. As I try to specialize in something, something comes up which tells that you should know this before you go any further and so forth. It's as if you need to know Java, XML, Ant, JUnit all at the same time. Can you suggest what I should do to remedy this? I really want to be an expert in Ruby. Putting in the effort is no problem for me as long as I know that I am going somewhere and am not just loitering around.Currently I am studying Ruby through "Programming Ruby: the pragmatic programmers guide, 2nd edition". I do understand that people don't like long rambling posts but I needed to get my feelings out of my system. This won't occur in future and sorry for this awfully long post. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.