From: Christopher Dicely Date: 2009-09-24T14:56:50+09:00 Subject: Re: New to Ruby, New to Programming. On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Jon Kupe wrote: > I just started programming about a month ago. I've started learning > Ruby, C++, and Java just to get a feel for languages. I'm really liking > ruby but I'm getting bored of doing super basic programs.(No more Hello > World's) At the same time I'm totally lost when looking at any of the > code snippets posted on this forum. I was wondering if anyone had any > suggestions for getting better/more familiar without taking a class(I'm > going to take one next semester at school) (1) Get a good basic book on the language you are learning (for Ruby, I like Programming Ruby [1.9] by Dave Thomas), both to read through linearly and to use as a reference, (2) Get things to try to do that are more involved than "Hello World", but where what you need to do is fairly well defined; some of the quizzes from the various incarnations of Ruby Quiz work for this -- and there are some similar things on the web that aren't Ruby specific; if you can find descriptions of basic algorithms (Wikipedia is a decent enough starting point for these), implementing them in the language you are trying to learn can help you get a feel for the language, (3) Figure out something you'd like to do for yourself, and try to build it a piece at a time.