# Newbie question **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 15, 2006, 1:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question/82009 "2006-03-15T01:47:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/claptrap)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 1:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question/82009/1 "2006-03-15T01:47:17Z")
I stumbled to Ruby by accident and read the beginning of Why’s guide, which sounded a a bit more fun than some other guides. I wonder if my 200MHz P2 laptop with Win98 can handle the program (compiler?) Meanwhile I’ve lost the link to learning Ruby online - anyone knows the link is still working? Perhaps Ruby is too difficult for me afterall, since I’m dyslexic and have no experience of command language, let alone of programming… ---
**Author:** ![claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/claptrap)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 2:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question/82009/2 "2006-03-15T02:34:09Z")
You mean this one? [http://tryruby.hobix.com/](http://tryruby.hobix.com/) ---
**Author:** ![claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/claptrap)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question/82009/3 "2006-03-17T01:19:14Z")
On 15 Mar 2006, at 00:47, Annika Karhunen wrote: > I stumbled to Ruby by accident and read the beginning of Why’s guide, > which sounded a a bit more fun than some other guides. I wonder if my > 200MHz P2 laptop with Win98 can handle the program (compiler?) I believe Ruby will run on a palm pilot, so I think your P2’s probably up to the task, provided you don’t want to do anything to intense with it. > Meanwhile I’ve lost the link to learning Ruby online - anyone knows > the > link is still working? Perhaps Ruby is too difficult for me afterall, > since I’m dyslexic and have no experience of command language, let > alone > of programming… You’ve lost the like to Why’s guide? Google? 🙂 In terms of learning a language, I would seriously recommend Ruby as a lovely starting point. It’s certainly what I would pick if I was tutoring someone at the moment. I think it’s pretty clean generally, but much more importantly, it’s so direct, quick, and to the point. Being able to do: require ‘socket’ server = TCPServer.new(5000) soc = server.accept soc.puts “Hello TCP connection” puts soc.gets in to irb, and open up another window running a telnet session on port 5000 and have the two talk - that completely amazed me, coming from a c++ background. 🙂 It was like being back on a BBC in the good old days, but with all sorts of lovely modern things. BTW, I’m not dyslexic; I was diagnosed as just being really bad at spelling. Some good friends who are dyslexic are very good programmers though, so I wouldn’t worry about that at all. Best of all, programmers are generally outrageously bad at spelling, so no one’s likely to notice if you are 🙂 Cheers, Benjohn ---
**Author:** ![claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@claptrap](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/claptrap)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 3:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question/82009/4 "2006-03-17T03:44:24Z")
> > I stumbled to Ruby by accident and read the beginning of Why’s guide, > > which sounded a a bit more fun than some other guides. I wonder if my > > 200MHz P2 laptop with Win98 can handle the program (compiler?) Why’s guide is probably the most fun way to describe a language ever written - it’s an awesome piece of technical literature (and mind-bending prose) > a lovely starting point. It’s certainly what I would pick if I was > tutoring someone at the moment. I think it’s pretty clean generally, > but much more importantly, it’s so direct, quick, and to the point. > > Being able to do: > require ‘socket’ > server = TCPServer.new(5000) > soc = server.accept > soc.puts “Hello TCP connection” > puts soc.gets I’d also recommend trying ruby - if you have a newish browser, you can even try learning it online ([http://tryruby.hobbix.com](http://tryruby.hobbix.com)) - why wrote this too, so it’s as fun as the guide ([http://poignantguide.net/](http://poignantguide.net/)) If you’re stuck with anything, this list is an amazingly friendly resource and most people here will read your post and try to respond with advice to help you learn. Trust me, if you want to learn a language quickly, ruby is one of the best (some people prefer Python, but I can’t comment as I’ve never really done anything in Python). As for dyslexia, having irb (interactive ruby) allows you to type in commands and try them out (spelling mistakes and all), without going through a tedious compile stage. Please don’t give up (completely) without giving ruby a try. To get started, I’d suggest that you first use tryruby (linked above) to see what the language is like, and then to get started on your own machine, you need to download and install ruby (there is a “one click installer” - it’s not the latest (1.8.4), but it does support Rails (the popular web-application MVC framework) - [http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl](http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl)) This package includes everything you need to get started, including a good text editor (Scite) Drop a mail here if you have problems setting this up on your machine. Kev