Holy Ruby on Rails Batman!

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Chris Missal, December 09, 2008

Tonight I got home, took care of a few things and plopped down in front of the computer. I was looking at Twitter and noticed a small exchange between @armmer (Jason Meridth) and @louis_salin (Louis Salin) about Ruby. I have been thinking about picking up a new language recently and have been leaning to F#. I hadn't really considered Ruby until recently and thought I would pose the following question:

@armmer @louis_salin I don't know ruby at all... Why should I learn it? I think I'm due for a new language to learn any suggestions/thoughts

By the way, that was 140 characters exactly... I'm good!

One of Jason's suggestions via email was to check out "try ruby! (in your browser)". Even though it hasn't ever been a problem before, one of my biggest fears is that learning a new language would frustrate me trying to learn the syntax. Especially something like Ruby that differs from C#, Java and even PHP. I found Ruby to be very easy in the beginning, the syntax flowed with my mind while I was thinking it. It's not a surprise that it's been called "a hospitable environment" for Domain Specific Language (DSL).

The books & links that Jason and Louis recommended:

"The Rails Way" by Obie Fernandez
"The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide
Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson, with Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, James Duncan Davidson, Justin Gehtland, and Andreas Schwarz
Creating a weblog in 15 minutes
try ruby! (in your browser)

... and some of Jason's delicious bookmarks on the topic...

... and some tools/resources to be aware of:

WeBrick (http web server)
Mongrel (http web server)
Rails (mvc stack)
Merb (mvc stack)
Capistrano (deployment)
Passenger (mod_rails)

If you find these links helpful, follow @armmer and @louis_salin on Twitter, they're always sharing loads of great info! Enjoy coding!

Filed Under: Blogging Domain Specific Language Ruby Tech Community