Proper Documentation

[manveru]

Hi list,

I=C2=B4m a bloody newbie in ruby, and the only thing worth to be called=20
language i learned was php.
although it=C2=B4s really fun and really enlightening for me to learn rub=
y,=20
there is one thing i miss:
ruby has no documentation that i am able to understand as a newcomer.
while that may be a lack of intelligence on my side, i don=C2=B4t think t=
hat=20
is the reason ^^
i slapped my brain around with the way to program OO, and as i finally=20
begin to understand how that is done, i imagine there are better ways to=20
learn it and i have gone through unnecessary pain.
there is the Pragmatic Programmers Guide=20
(http://www.rubycentral.com/book/) and that=C2=B4s it. (at least i didn=C2=
=B4t see=20
any other tutorials)
i have learned a lot through that tutorial, and maybe i really have to=20
buy all the ruby-books at amazon to stay up to date with changes on ruby.

i really would like a kind of php.net (http://www.php.net) for ruby, and=20
i am willing to contribute an enormous amount of time into a thing like=20
that (but well, i=C2=B4m a noob - i can=C2=B4t do that myself)
is there something like that? (maybe in some alpha-stage?)
i know ruby-docs, but that helps only when you have understood it already
is there some tutorial on OO itself? so we could use it and write a=20
ruby-version of it...

i don=C2=B4t know if i=C2=B4m only ignorant of the whole ruby-sphere out =
there, or=20
if it really exists only in japanese...

thx for your contribution
Michael Fellinger

 

[Johan Toki Persson]

Try these

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020103.html
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNuby
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyBookList

Cheers

 

[Martin Larsson]

And this:

http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/

 

[Randy Kramer]

i have learned a lot through that tutorial, and maybe i really have to
buy all the ruby-books at amazon to stay up to date with changes on ruby.

i really would like a kind of php.net (http://www.php.net) for ruby, and
i am willing to contribute an enormous amount of time into a thing like
that (but well, i=C2=B4m a noob - i can=C2=B4t do that myself)
is there something like that? (maybe in some alpha-stage?)

There are other (online) tutorials (and dead tree books), but WikiLearn=20
(http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Wikilearn/WebChanges) is intended to be my=20
"learning notebook" "project", and I'm always looking for help.

I'm making a renewed effort to learn Ruby, and would like to record my=20
learnings on WikiLearn. (I've done more recording of my learnings off line=
=20
recently as I've gradually found updating TWiki to be a little slower than=
=20
I'd like--one of the things I'm hoping to create with Ruby are some tools t=
o=20
make such updating much more convenient and faster.)

Part of my goal is to make things simple. Reading part of Programming Ruby=
=20
2nd edition today, I summarized part of the chapter on exceptions as follow=
s:

begin

<try to do something>

rescue=20

<if it fails, do this>
=20
ensure

< whether it succeeds or fails, do this>

end


(I've got some similar "summaries" that include multiple exceptions, else, =
and=20
retry.)

I'd love to have your contributions to WikiLearn.

i know ruby-docs, but that helps only when you have understood it already
is there some tutorial on OO itself? so we could use it and write a
ruby-version of it...

If you (or anyone else) is interested, let me know, or just go to WikiLearn=
=20
and start creating pages. (Eventually I'll move WikiLearn to its own site=
=20
(separate from twiki.org), when I do, I'll create (one or more) separate=20
web(s) for Ruby--for the time being I'll separate the Ruby contents by a=20
prefix (or suffix) on page names. (The first thought is simply a prefix of=
=20
Ruby.)

regards,
Randy Kramer

PS: One of my "handicaps" has been learning the oop idiom, coming from a=20
background in procedural type programming, so I'm interested and familiar=20
with the problems of doing so. If you're coming from a similar background,=
=20
let me know, I think I can come up with some suggestions that might help.

 

[Daniel Amelang]

Don't forget to check out ruby-doc.org.

Dan

 

[Chris Pine]

I wrote a tutorial (soon to be book). It's fairly popular, I think;
it showed up in del.icio.us/popular recently, anyway.

http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

It's pretty gentle, and many have learned Ruby by it over the years.=20
And I always encourage you to email me if you find something in it
that confuses you.

Between that and the other great resources presented here, you should
have no trouble finding your footing.

Welcome to Ruby!

Chris

 

[basi]

Hi,
Sounds like a good book for me. But Attempting to connect to
http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
times out.
basi

 

[James Britt]

Don't forget to check out ruby-doc.org.

http://www.ruby-doc.org/gettingstarted/

as well as

http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/

and

http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/


James



--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

 

[Chris Pine]

Sounds like a good book for me. But Attempting to connect to

http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

Odd. It's working for me now, anyway. And was then. Maybe it went
down briefly, but it is almost always up.



Chris

 

[basi]

Yes, it is up now. Thanks.
basi

 

[Ben Giddings]

Hi Michael,

It would be great if you can take notes as you go. As Rails and web-
applications in Ruby grow more popular, I'm sure we'll have more and
more converts from PHP. It would be really handy to have a set of
notes that say "If you're used to doing X in PHP, in Ruby you do it
as Y". The lack of uniform, available, well-focused documentation is
a known problem in Ruby, but we do want to fix it. One place to
start is redesigning the web site. We're working on that. If you
can think of specific ideas to make things better, we'd love to hear.

As a general case, eventually I think we'd love to have special
documentation on transitioning from various other languages to Ruby,
but unless you've recently done that transition, or can pick the
brain of someone who did, it's hard to know what to say. PHP to Ruby
is one bit of info we really know we need. Another is Perl to Ruby,
and Python to Ruby. There is more info out there on Java to Ruby,
but it seems to be pretty scattered.

I hope your Ruby learning experience ends up being a pleasant one!

Ben