hello everyone,
my name is “arnuld”. I have only a very small question regarding RUBY. I
am
asking since i am not mature programmer. I will be as brief as i can in
explaning my problem.here is my MAIN-question:
– Can a newbie understand the RUBY when everyone knows RUBY is the
PURE
Object-Oriented-language? –
before you answer this question please know my
little-programming-history &
some more so that your answer can be personalised according to my
mental-level & my needs. here are the points:
-
I was a “sales-man” working with the Standard-Chartered Bank’s
personal-loan branch. I also sold Eureka-Forbes water
purifiers.but i failed at both. i think the reason was i never loved
my
job. i hated it. I also tried call-center, as you know
INDIA is drawing a large part of call-center industry towards
itself. i
failed there. i also tried hotel job both as a waiter &
as a front-office executive but also failed there. also i have only
56%
markes in my Bachelor of Science (with computer applications).Inspite of
a
computer based degree i do know any programming languages. worse even
after
completing my graduation i did not know that a computer runs on an
operating
system instead i thought it runs on WINDOWS and there is nothing else to
run
computers & here is more i have some letters and letters like C, C++,
HTML,
DHTML, BASIC, Fundamentals of JAVA, RDBMS onto my certificate, hence I
am a
jobless person today. i failed everywhere
and i always believed i should not have failed. but there are reasons
behind
this. now i am a completely different person. I entered into programming
only for the “love of programming”. love has power. love has intimacy. I
feel intimacy with programming and i felt it most intense when i see the
syntax of RUBY. sometimes my family members found me sleeping on the
chair
in the front of my computer (a very few times it happened). I do not
know
what exactly is that but what i know for certain is that it all started
with
movie “HACKERS” that i watched on HBO. anyway i do not want to waste
your
time, we can talk about it in another article, right now lets get backto
the
point → newbie wants to learn RUBY. -
I am not a pure newbie, I read the following books:
a.) “How to think like a computer scientist - learning with python” -
by
Allen B. Downey, Jeffrey Elkner and Chris M…I understood 85% of the book, this was the 1st book i
pursued and i was just confused when i came to the
chapters on ‘classes & objects’, ‘queues’ & ‘trees’.
then i
left the book. but even then i read those chapters again
and again 3-4 times and got an idea about Object-Oriented
programming and even if its difficult i liked it.
b.) “Learning to programme” a tutorial - by Alan Gauld
did not read much here as i hated his style of mixing
VB,
JAVA & PYTHON.
c.) “Non-Programmers tutorial” - by Josh-Cogliati.
again based on python. understood and solved every
exercise of it.
d.) “An introduction to programming in Emacs-LISP” by Robert. J
Chassell.
(from GNU-press)
a great book on how my favourite text
editor
“GNU Emacs” is implemented. Understood every part
of it but stopped reading in the miidle because i found
something
more-powerfull & more-interesting, that is next book.
e.) “How to design programes” - MITpress (@htdp.org)
this was the book because of which i left my favourite
GNU-press book. i am still reading it even when i am writing
this very email. I fell in love with this book too as this
book
has solved all of problems i was facing with programming
from the very beginning . I have just finished the 1st part
of
the book and will complete it in next 3-3.5 months. solved
98% of the exercises untill current reading.It uses SCHEME
language to teach how to desigh programs.
In the meantime i also learned “GNU project”, “A brief history of
hackerdom”, free-softwares & open-soure revolution. After all of this I
completely abondoned proprietary-softwares.I will prefer to die rather
than
working on proprietary-products. presently i am writing this email in
GNU
Emacs on debian “sarge”.
Now you have seen my mental-level on how much i understand things, how
much
i do not & either death or Open-Source. Now this time after i will
finish
HTDP i want to go again differently (pragmatic), that is the first
reason of
choosing RUBY. 2nd is “love”, same as i have with programming. at the
time
when whole world is drowning into PYTHON & C, i don’t know why but RUBY
is
attracting me like a magnet attracts iron. I do not even know one
language
completely but still I am not able to stop my dreams which contain RUBY
syntax.
i searched for RUBY books. I selected “programming RUBY - pragmatic
programmers guide” by Dave T., Chad F., Andy H. (2nd
edition). I
read some reviews @ amazon.com those reviews have put some fear into my
mind
about RUBY. 2 of them told me this horrifying thing:
– Being pure object-oriented language, ruby’s more complex than perl or
python, you must have decent grasp of O-O design,& design patterns to
use it
effectively, and you have to spend time learning how the object model
descends from Object, Module, Class classes and Kernel, Comparable,
Enumerable modules to know where to find classes/methods referenced.–
now this is thing that i think i will not be able to understand. Does
that
mean:
1.) A person with little programming knowledge can not learn RUBY?
1.) Does he need to be such an experienced-object-oriented-programmer to
understand RUBY?
2.) If it is true then why CHRIS-PINE wrote an introduction to
programming
using RUBY?
It is my MAIN question asked in 3-parts:
Can a newbie understand the RUBY when everyone knows RUBY is the PURE
Object-Oriented-language?
One of my known-persons is living in ENGLAND and he will come back to
INDIA
in the march-month. I am relatively a poor-newbie, worse even jobless.
he
asked me to give me the name of the book i intend to by, he will bring
bring
the book here& hence shipment charges can be saved. that way I can save
the
money i do not have. if i do not give him the name then he will not buy
and
after this he will come back after 1 year and that’s too long. that is
why i
am asking this question even when i have 3 months of time to finish the
current-book.
here are the 3 different paths & i can take one of them:
PATH-1. HTDP → scheme programming-language - by R. Kent Dybvig →
SCHEME based project-work →
→ PYTHON-intro → PYTHON -advanced → project -work on
python → RUBY-DOC.org →
→ RUBY-pragmtic-guide by dave thomas → some project-work
on
RUBY
PATH-2. HTDP → RUBY-DOC.org → RUBY-pragmtic-guide by dave
thomas
→ some project-work on RUBY
PATH-3 HTDP-> suggested by YOU
One-more REASON of asking for help:
by DEC-2006 , i want to start earning and become
independent as my father is going to be retired by the end of
2007.right now i am 25. at the same time i also do not
want
to put myself with wrong programming-language
choices.
Thanks a lot for having such a patience as my mail went lengthy. may you
provide a reasonable answer based on your experience with programming?
I will really feel grateful for your help.
“arnuld”
