# How to read RoR (ruby?) aloud?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-read-ror-ruby-aloud/84390>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 3, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-read-ror-ruby-aloud/84390 "2007-02-03T22:49:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dankelley)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-read-ror-ruby-aloud/84390/1 "2007-02-03T22:49:19Z")

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Is there a recommended way to “speak” (orally or mentally) the  
punctuation-loaded RoR (Ruby) constructs?

I’m guessing that

: is silent  
=\> is spoken as “is”  
do |thing| is spoken as “do with thing”

so that a reader’s mind might be “say”  
create\_table “containers\_drinks”, :id =\> false do |t|  
as  
createtable containersdrinks with id as false do with t

PS. I know this is an odd question. I ask because I’ve only seen any  
of these symbols on a screen; nobody I know personally uses either  
Ruby or RoR. Does pronunciation matter? Probably not, but I do  
remember learning French vocabulary from a book with a poor  
pronunciation key, and being embarrassed in class when I pronounced  
things as they looked. More seriously, though, I think forming a  
mental sound may help people to adopt a language. For example, I  
adored APL back in the day, but I became aware that the language was  
not catching on partly because people couldn’t talk about the code  
aloud.

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**Author:** ![dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dankelley)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 10:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-read-ror-ruby-aloud/84390/2 "2007-02-03T22:54:20Z")

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Hi –

On Sat, 3 Feb 2007, dankelley wrote:

> so that a reader’s mind might be “say”  
> create\_table “containers\_drinks”, :id =\> false do |t|  
> as  
> createtable containersdrinks with id as false do with t

It’s a valiant attempt but I don’t think I’d know what you were  
talking about 🙂

> PS. I know this is an odd question. I ask because I’ve only seen any  
> of these symbols on a screen; nobody I know personally uses either  
> Ruby or RoR. Does pronunciation matter? Probably not, but I do  
> remember learning French vocabulary from a book with a poor  
> pronunciation key, and being embarrassed in class when I pronounced  
> things as they looked. More seriously, though, I think forming a  
> mental sound may help people to adopt a language. For example, I  
> adored APL back in the day, but I became aware that the language was  
> not catching on partly because people couldn’t talk about the code  
> aloud.

I just use lots of hand gestures 🙂

David

–  
Q. What is THE Ruby book for Rails developers?  
A. RUBY FOR RAILS by David A. Black ([Ruby for Rails](http://www.manning.com/black))  
(See what readers are saying! [http://www.rubypal.com/r4rrevs.pdf](http://www.rubypal.com/r4rrevs.pdf))  
Q. Where can I get Ruby/Rails on-site training, consulting, coaching?  
A. Ruby Power and Light, LLC ([http://www.rubypal.com](http://www.rubypal.com))

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@dankelley](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dankelley)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 1:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-read-ror-ruby-aloud/84390/3 "2007-02-04T01:24:30Z")

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I don’t personally know any rubyists either, but I don’t ever really  
remember speaking or hearing C or Java (unless you count university  
lectures, but even then the lecturer used an OHP or computer projector).  
I  
don’t really think there is a standard way. I can understand what you  
mean  
about making it easier to learn if you know how to say it, but I’m quite  
a  
visual person, so I don’t really need to. If you would like to be able  
to  
speak it, just work out a standard that’s best for you and use that.

People don’t generally talk about code in that much detail unless they  
are  
at a computer in my experience. The only times I’ve ever talked about  
coding, it’s been object structure, or at most, “I used a for-loop to do  
it,” that sort of thing. Usually when talking about Java, I could’ve  
been  
talking about any OO language.

-Nathan