From: Chad Perrin <code@...>
Date: 2012-04-08T02:38:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Advise on learning Ruby

On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 01:47:56AM +0900, Taz798 U. wrote:
> 
> I'm still new to programming, with some familiarity of HTML, CSS, and a
> bit of PHP/delphi.
> 
> Just recently I was learning Java and came across the fundementals of
> Programming such as constructors, methods etc. I'm basically at this
> stage right now, and still learning.
> 
> I actually want to learn Ruby on Rails and get into web development.
> However, I have been recommended to learn Ruby first, as it will be
> easier to learn RoR. I was told that, with Ruby I can get somewhat of an
> understanding of the language itself, instead of going straight into RoR
> where I might be able to follow Tutorials, but I may not be able to
> actually understand what I'm doing.
> 
> So I wanted to ask if anyone could recommend me some good tutorials or
> books for beginners like me to learn some Ruby.

I wrote an article for TechRepublic about good Ruby books a while back
that I think might be helpful. [1]

If you have access to a Unix-like environment in your everyday computing
life, you may want to devote some time to "living" in that environment
enough so that you really learn to make good use of the shell as a useful
interface to the system.  I have found that the fact I spend almost all
of my time that does not involve a web browser in a terminal emulator
window, using the shell and console-based applications, extremely helpful
when picking up new languages.  It gives me plenty of opportunity to
automate and ease little bits of my life by writing admin scripts, helper
tools, and utilities in whatever language I'm learning at the time,
stretching my skills in the process.

Things that many learning resources for various programming languages
often do not handle well, however, is exactly the sort of stuff that
leads to the development of well-designed command line utilities.
Luckily, information about these things is relatively easy to find on the
Internet for Ruby, including stuff like:

* command line argument parsing with OptParse
* command line filter input (I wrote an articel about that too [2])
* using backticks, exec, and system to execute shell commands

. . . and so on.

Good luck!

NOTES:

1. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=3886

2. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=3481

Please excuse the formatting issues related to inline code samples (which
have been forced into not-inline code samples by some incredibly stupid
CSS decisions by the design team at CBSi) in my TR articles.  Changes to
the CSS for the site were made some time after this article was
published, and my access to my old articles there to fix them up has
evaporated in the interim.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]