New to Ruby and Programming

[Will Shattuck]

Hi folks. Happy New Year!

I have lurked for a little bit to see what this list is like. I am
please to see how helpful people are. I have a couple of questions
for someone starting out with Ruby and Programming in general.

Some background... I have some fundamental understanding of
programming, but I have more holes in my foundation than not. I work
with some friends on a C# project, I learned some basics of Java so I
kind of understand OOP. But I still do not grasp a lot.

My question: Where should I start in learning to use Ruby? I have
some ideas, but I do not want to prejudice the discussion with my
ideas.

Also, I have a project in mind to use Ruby... A Nethack bot. A friend
programmed one in C# and I thought it would be fun to try and use
Ruby. I know I have a long way to go but it would be fun for me.

Anyway, thanks for any advice and help you can offer in this new adventure.

Will

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Chris Pine's "Learn to Program" is available now from Pragmatic
Programmers. I'd start there.

 

[J. Ryan Sobol]

Can you list and describe the programs you've developed in the past?
Were they school related or side projects for fun or for profit?

~ ryan ~

 

[Will Shattuck]

Can you list and describe the programs you've developed in the past?
Were they school related or side projects for fun or for profit?

~ ryan ~

Well... that's just it. I haven't developed anything really. I have
done some web programming with PHP, but that has usually consisted of
modifying someone else's work. So basically nothing That's why I
wanted to start with Ruby. I noticed that I can cut out many lines of
code by using Ruby so I figured it would be a good start.

Will

 

[J. Ryan Sobol]

Sounds like your at the cusp of a new and exciting thing, so I want
to give you the best advice I can.

Here's the table of contents from the book "Learning To Program" that
Ed Borasky suggested in a previous post. (http://
www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/) Just by glancing at the
chapter titles, which of them seem new, familiar, and old news to you
in terms of your past programming experience?

1. Getting Started
2. Numbers
3. Letters
4. Variables and Assignment
5. Mixing It Up
6. More about Methods
7. Flow Control
8. Arrays and Iterators
9. Writing Your Own Methods
10. There's Nothing New to Learn in Chapter 10
11 Reading and Writing, Saving and Loading, Yin and...
12. New Classes of Objects
13. Creating New Classes, Changing Existing Ones
14. Blocks and Procs

~ ryan ~

 

[Will Shattuck]

Sounds like your at the cusp of a new and exciting thing, so I want
to give you the best advice I can.

Yep, I am about as crispy... er... cuspy as they come right now

Here's the table of contents from the book "Learning To Program" that
Ed Borasky suggested in a previous post. (http://
www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/) Just by glancing at the
chapter titles, which of them seem new, familiar, and old news to you
in terms of your past programming experience?

1. Getting Started

It seems I am always doing this with learning to program

2. Numbers
3. Letters

a..b..c..d..e..f..g.. yep I know my numbers and letters, but I am sure
I don't know what they mean in the Ruby Context.

4. Variables and Assignment

Creating and assigning values to variables I understand. I have done
it in my C# scripting for the mud engine I am helping to create. foo
=3D bar; etc etc ... Then I know how to test for (in)equality... foo =3D=
=3D
bar, foo !=3D bar, foo < bar, etc etc

5. Mixing It Up

Not sure what they mean here...

6. More about Methods

This is probably where I get hung up the most with classes, methods,
instances, instantiation, encapsulation,etc

7. Flow Control

IF, ELSE, THEN, WHILE, etc. I understand the concepts, but will have
to learn The Ruby Way to make them work.

8. Arrays and Iterators

I touched on arrays in the "Head Start Java" book I was learning from,
but never got very far. Iterators are like " foo =3D foo +1" or " foo
+=3D foo " right?

9. Writing Your Own Methods

Methods that are inside classes? Again another place I have a very
basic concept of, but haven't done much with.

10. There's Nothing New to Learn in Chapter 10
11 Reading and Writing, Saving and Loading, Yin and...

File operations.. I did very little of it. I wanted to write a file
parser in PHP for game group for editing files, but didn't understand
the functions very much. I understand the concepts, but not the
application.

12. New Classes of Objects
13. Creating New Classes, Changing Existing Ones

Well I have learned to modify templates, variables, etc in previous
applications, but haven't created any new classes or objects on my
own.

14. Blocks and Procs

One word... huh?

~ ryan ~

Thanks for taking the time, Ryan, in helping me. I really appreciate
all the suggestions.

I'm looking at an older version of "Learn to Program" by Chris Pine
that I find in the links that James Britt sent. But I'm starting to
fall asleep now so I probably won't go very far right yet. heh

Will

 

[Scott Smith]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Nah, iterating is where you step through the elements of an array. Your
examples are simply assignments--giving a value to a variable (think
basic algebra).

Methods are basically chunks of code split up so they can be reused in
other places. Also good for code maintenance--instead of having one huge
chunk of code, it is broken into smaller bits.

Do you actually have a need to write anything, or is it more of a "Hey
I'd like to learn this, it sounds interesting" thing? It sounds like
most of your prior forays into programming have been the latter. I find
that I learn (and more specifically RETAIN) much much better when I have
a direct need. I can't just grab a book and learn an arbitrary language
just for the hell of it. Something will eventually come up a few days
into it or whatever and I won't have a specific need to keep focused on it.

Scott

I touched on arrays in the "Head Start Java" book I was learning from,
but never got very far. Iterators are like " foo = foo +1" or " foo
+= foo " right?



Methods that are inside classes? Again another place I have a very
basic concept of, but haven't done much with.

- --
(e-mail address removed)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFDuNZQKBeC2yZ3EEsRAkWVAKCGm//cJaKzp1mZ/B/mSpK2ybtt/ACghue4
erRZIJPmDqCnF5uDQmPYjlA=
=tlVU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[J. Ryan Sobol]

Seems like this book is a good match for you. And the price is right
too: $20 for a paper back, $13 for the PDF version, or $25 for both.

Also, the "Pickaxe" book is pretty much the standard for learning
Ruby. I'm not sure if its at the appropriate level for you, but the
first edition is freely available online. http://www.rubycentral.com/
book/

~ ryan ~

 

[Wilson Bilkovich]

Hi folks. Happy New Year!

I have lurked for a little bit to see what this list is like. I am
please to see how helpful people are. I have a couple of questions
for someone starting out with Ruby and Programming in general.

Some background... I have some fundamental understanding of
programming, but I have more holes in my foundation than not. I work
with some friends on a C# project, I learned some basics of Java so I
kind of understand OOP. But I still do not grasp a lot.

My question: Where should I start in learning to use Ruby? I have
some ideas, but I do not want to prejudice the discussion with my
ideas.

Also, I have a project in mind to use Ruby... A Nethack bot. A friend
programmed one in C# and I thought it would be fun to try and use
Ruby. I know I have a long way to go but it would be fun for me.

Anyway, thanks for any advice and help you can offer in this new adventur= e.

Others have already given very good answers on how to learn Ruby.. but
if you want to learn the fundamentals of programming as a concept
(rather than any specific implementation of that..), I don't think
there's anything better than:
http://www.htdp.org/
..and
http://www2.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/book.html
In theory the second book is only available in hardcover.. but the
Internet Archive still has the old free PDF version, from before it
went to press:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040202004840/http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/=
PVR/booksingle.pdf

(The final version has corrections and improvements. If you can afford
it, I recommend it.)

 

[James Britt]

Sounds like your at the cusp of a new and exciting thing, so I want to
give you the best advice I can.

Here's the table of contents from the book "Learning To Program" that
Ed Borasky suggested in a previous post. (http://
www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/) Just by glancing at the
chapter titles, which of them seem new, familiar, and old news to you
in terms of your past programming experience?

<snip/>

Question: Is this teaching just the Ruby syntax for assorted constructs,
or does it also include algorithm analysis and selection,
speed/memory/resource considerations, application composition and
design, and other programming concepts?

Put another way, what does "program" mean in the book title, and is it
what Will means/expects when learning to program?



James
--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
http://www.artima.com/rubycs/ - Ruby Code & Style: Writers wanted
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
http://www.30secondrule.com - Building Better Tools

 

[Martin DeMello]

Others have already given very good answers on how to learn Ruby.. but
if you want to learn the fundamentals of programming as a concept
(rather than any specific implementation of that..), I don't think
there's anything better than:
http://www.htdp.org/

Seconded - this is an amazingly good book.

http://www2.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/book.html

This one's excellent too, but pretty heavy going. I wouldn't recommend
it as a teach-yourself-programming book.

martin

 

[Wilson Bilkovich]

Seconded - this is an amazingly good book.


This one's excellent too, but pretty heavy going. I wouldn't recommend
it as a teach-yourself-programming book.

At least you'll know if you're serious about it, after the first few
chapters.

 

[Chad Perrin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Nah, iterating is where you step through the elements of an array. Your
examples are simply assignments--giving a value to a variable (think
basic algebra).

To elaborate, I tend to suspect that the arrays and iterators chapter
discusses things like the each method -- that's what is meant by
"iterators" here. In particular, you could have an array called myarray
(for example) and iterate over its contents using the each method to
perform the same action on each element of the array:

myarray.each do { |foo| puts foo }

 

[Esteban Manchado Velázquez]

--4Ckj6UjgE2iN1+kY
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi,

[...]
My question: Where should I start in learning to use Ruby? I have
some ideas, but I do not want to prejudice the discussion with my
ideas.

I think nobody else has actually said it, so: try TryRuby
(http://tryruby.hobix.com/)

It's very cool and shows basic Ruby in an interactive, fun fashion.

--=20
Esteban Manchado Vel=E1zquez <[email protected]> - http://www.foton.es
EuropeSwPatentFree - http://EuropeSwPatentFree.hispalinux.es

--4Ckj6UjgE2iN1+kY
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: Digital signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFDuSqlhYgK5b1UDsERAu8AAJ94VI1Uwa6BRmT05uZqGF8wJSLxRgCfZh62
uatq9I4utWEWVDGhxX9Tri8=
=5VDL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--4Ckj6UjgE2iN1+kY--

 

[James Edward Gray II]

In particular, you could have an array called myarray
(for example) and iterate over its contents using the each method to
perform the same action on each element of the array:

myarray.each do { |foo| puts foo }

Only we would never write that since the following does the same thing:

puts myarray

James Edward Gray II

 

[Steve Litt]

I concur. The table of contents seems to list the skills you need in the order
you need them. Looks like a good book, and from the sample chapter I read,
well written.

One more thing. Whenever I need to learn a new technology, here's the learning
method I use:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/rl.htm#flowchart

SteveT

 

[Chad Perrin]

Only we would never write that since the following does the same thing:

puts myarray

Well . . . true.

This is why I don't teach programming.

 

[Michael 'entropie' Trommer]

--dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi folks. Happy New Year!
peace,

=20
My question: Where should I start in learning to use Ruby? I have
some ideas, but I do not want to prejudice the discussion with my
ideas.

code little projects which fits your needs, thats imho the only way to
advance in programming (or in a specific lang).

Also, I have a project in mind to use Ruby... A Nethack bot. A friend
programmed one in C# and I thought it would be fun to try and use
Ruby. I know I have a long way to go but it would be fun for me.

code it.

loop do
if your are ready, look at your code, look at your expierience and code it
again if you dont like it .
end

So long
--
Michael 'entropie' Trommer; http://ackro.org

ruby -e "0.upto((a=3D'njduspAhnbjm/dpn').size-1){|x| a[x]-=3D1}; p 'mailto:=
'+a"

--dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFDuYcvBBd8ye5RguQRAkHNAJ0WfxSGkjH4Bg/dHAaCJlZEq8iEWQCff1fP
0AFj6A2Ne7YYlu3lDHtJbrc=
=zmzw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg--

 

[Hal Fulton]

Well . . . true.

This is why I don't teach programming.

Actually, I think there's a difference in behavior
if you try them both.


Hal

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Actually, I think there's a difference in behavior
if you try them both.

Other than the return value?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
=> nil

James Edward Gray II