# Newbie questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [January 10, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/125615 "2008-01-10T17:28:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pytlik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/779978/32.png) [@pytlik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pytlik)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/125615/1 "2008-01-10T17:28:31Z")
Hallo everybody. I discovered the Ruby Q. site some time ago and I’ve been much intrigued by the Ruby language. So I’ve begun trying to solve some of the old problems, and I’m very interested in learning Ruby to finally resume work on my many old hobby projects that lie unfinished since when I stopped using Pascal and then never managed to use C++ for anything that I didn’t _REALLY HAVE_ to do 😉 As an hobbyist programmer, I am an orphan of the good old Borland Turbo Pascal 7 😉 I remember well how I learnt to use it mostly from the online help (!) many years ago, in school. The thing I most liked about it was the tight integration of every part (editor, compiler, debugger) and the well-organized default libraries: I put “uses crt” at the beginning and had my console/speaker functions, “uses graph” and I had my graphics primitives, etc… Pretty rudimental things for today’s standards, yeah, but I never found something that usable anymore. And I’m talking about a 16-bit DOS application… ^\_\_\_^ So, I’d like to know if someone put together a well-documented “compilation” of basic libraries for 2D graphics, _simple_ windowing, audio, and inline C functions. Nothing too fancy: the easier the better, since I have to worry first and foremost about learning Ruby for now. I like to spend time writing clever algorithms (well, as clever as I manage to be ;), much less managing interfaces. Also, I don’t like to be forced to read dozens of specifications to choose a couple of libraries for a 300-line program: i’ll do that if and when programming becomes my main job 😛 I’ve googled far and wide and found many interesting projects that may wery well be worth a try, but I would like to know well my “base architecture” while I learn, and not overwhelm myself with details already. For the same reason I’d like to use only stable and well-documented libraries (eg. the “shoes” project that has been advertised yesterday seems very much like what I need for graphics, but alphas are for people who KNOW what they are doing, right?) I’ve seen that many efforts have been done in this sense regarding Rails, but I’m not interested in web development (yet 😉 so they aren’t quite what I need. Quite the opposite, I’d like to dabble with hardware a bit, e.g. writing a control application for a small microcontroller device that needs to communicate via serial port. Thanks in advance for any response 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pytlik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/779978/32.png) [@pytlik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pytlik)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/125615/2 "2008-01-10T18:02:51Z")
On Jan 10, 2008 2:28 PM, Martin B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I’ve googled far and wide and found many interesting projects that may > wery well be worth a try, but I would like to know well my “base > architecture” while I learn, and not overwhelm myself with details > already. For the same reason I’d like to use only stable and > well-documented libraries (eg. the “shoes” project that has been > advertised yesterday seems very much like what I need for graphics, but > alphas are for people who KNOW what they are doing, right?) I think the first library you’ll want to install is Rubygems, if you haven’t already :). The O. Click Installer for Windows already comes with it, I believe, and nearly all other libraries mentioned here can be obtained through it. Well, Shoes does sound like what you need for graphics, as it’s meant to be simple and support a wide array of fun eye candy. The only problem I see with Shoes is that it’s a bit of a standalone application, so you have to work a little harder when trying to integrate other gems (Ruby libraries) with it. Not /much/ harder, though - I think it mostly involves installing the gem in your Shoes directory, rather than performing a system-wide installation. It’s surprisingly friendly for an alpha, and comes with lots of examples. There are many other GUI toolkits with bindings for Ruby, but they tend to be a bit more complicated than Shoes :). If you’re on Windows, I think your best bets might be Tk and FX (Fox). Ruby comes with bindings for TK, and you can download a Windows version of the toolkit itself from ActiveState (google for their site :)). Fox can be used through FXRuby. Linux also has Tk and Fox, and also has easier access to QT and GTK+. I know GTK has a graphical interface designer named Glade, which you can use to design interfaces for your Ruby programs. QT probably has something equivalent. For inline C functions, RubyInline seems to be the “de facto” standard (I /think/ it’s for embedding C code into Ruby, but I may have gotten it backwards :)). I’m not too familiar with Ruby audio libraries, but I don’t think there’s a single audio manipulation library for Ruby. What exactly would you like to do with audio? I’m sure other people here can name some cool gems for that.