Learning Ruby (and Rails)

NogDog

Not an immediate concern yet, but down the road I'm probably going to have to learn Ruby for my current job. Just wondering if any of you had run into any books or other resources that are particularly good for someone transitioning over from PHP?

NogDog

I just started looking at http://rubykoans.com, which looks like it might be a decent place to begin my learning.

laserlight

Apostate!

(Then again, I've been programming in Python on a nearly daily basis for more than two years now.)

dalecosp

laserlight;11029401 wrote:
Apostate!

(Then again, I've been programming in Python on a nearly daily basis for more than two years now.)

😃

Is that a job requirement, or a personal preference? I have software working in PHP, Javascript, Python ... a little C (very little, I guess, in terms of scope). If I ever have to do a "quick hack" I still almost always pick PHP spur-of-the-moment and have to force myself to think about whether Python is better suited ...

I'm pretty sure it's that "mastery" in Python hasn't been achieved yet ... or something like that. Kind of like dreaming ... always in English 😉 😉

NogDog

A separate team is developing a new core product that will combine several of our separate products, and I want to be ready if/when the product I work on gets subsumed into that project. Besides, it's always good to learn a new programming language whenever you can. 🙂

sneakyimp

I can't help hating on Ruby a little. No good reason why except maybe get off my lawn?

I bought The Ruby Programming Language and couldn't bring myself to read it. I think it was the lack of curly braces that bothered me -- makes it look a little too much like Visual Basic. I have never bothered to understand what advantages it ostensibly provides and am still curious what it is supposed to do so well. Any comments on that front would be much appreciated.

I've heard good things about python from people I trust.

Rather than learning new languages for scripting server actions, I've been more interested in learning cloud technologies, multithreading/multiprocessing, security/encryption concepts, and how to scale web apps. I am extremely interested in mobile phone dev -- after all, there are a lot more phones out there than servers/computers.

I would say avoid anything that doesn't perform garbage collection and memory management.