From: Claus Spitzer <DocBoobenstein@...>
Date: 2004-05-04T02:42:43+09:00
Subject: Re: What do you use Ruby for?

<snip>

> So what do YOU use Ruby for? �What kinds of development are you using
> it for (I'm not asking for trade secrets or anything!).
> 
 
Let's see... I've been using Ruby to create scripts to do otherwise
tedious system administration tasks... copying files across networks,
maintaining updates, etc. Not exclusively though, I also use Perl
heavily for that.
Lately I've taken to doing a lot of my research (as a graduate
student) in Ruby. Most of it is related to software architecture
(evaluation, evolution, etc).
Having said that, I have to admit that I don't use Ruby for _specific_
tasks. I'm just very comfortable with it, and it does what _I_ need it
to do.
If you know Perl, and have some Perl scripts, perhaps a good exercise
for you could be to ruby-ize them. That's how I learned initially.
Another thing that you can do is take the examples provided with the
installer (if you use the Windows installer - on other systems you may
need to download them separately, I know there is a Debian apt package
with samples), run them, see what they do, and then try to make them
do something different. Try to write a clock, or a program that reads
comma-separated values from a file into a table and displays them, or
a simple website retriever... get creative ;-) .
Well I hope that helped. Cheers!
 � -CWS