Don’t be discouraged. Ruby is far from the easiest language to learn,
especially when compared to languages like Java (the language itself,
not the complicated frameworks like J2EE). I think Ruby aims to make
hard things easy for advanced programmers, while perhaps falling down a
bit in making easy things easy for junior programmers. As you’ve
seen, passing blocks of code as arguments comes up fairly early in the
reading. This is a fairly advanced idea for someone new to programming.
Ruby also borrows a lot of tricks from languages like PERL which are
famous for cramming entire applications into twenty lines of code. In
many languages it’s considered bad style to do 10 things in one line of
code, but in Ruby it seems par for the course. In my opinion this would
make it especially hard to learn for someone who doesn’t have a
programming background.
On the other hand, Ruby allows you to do some really cool things which
would be much more difficult or impossible in other languages. Ruby on
Rails, for example.
My advice to you is to use IRB, take small steps, and if you get totally
discouraged, try another language.
I looked at Perl briefly and all the {'s kind of make me nervous.
It seems like Ruby is kind of straight foward in a way (correct me if
i’m wrong) and I shouldn’t have too much trouble figuring it out but
like I said I’ve never programmed before. The closest to any kind of
“programming” is sudo apt-get on Ubuntu or using bash at all. And that’s
a stretch. I’d love to learn a language mostly to say I’ve done it. And
mostly because well, I can’t say I’ve done anything else in my life. har
har.
I guess I’ll just review and review and go over and over again until I
get things right and can do it without thinking about it, or try the
“create what you want” suggestion and learn head on. That seems to be
the only way I’ll learn anything anymore.
Skt
On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 02:06 +0900, Hartin, Brian wrote:
famous for cramming entire applications into twenty lines of code. In
discouraged, try another language.
I was alright with blocks, and then along came these @ and several other
But for now, I guess I’ll just keep reading the tutorials and try that
You sing a new song, unsung.
pick up. There are some powerful concepts in there like blocks and
Why’s guide is a biggggg help but I don’t know why I can’t retain
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As you’ve
seen, passing blocks of code as arguments comes up fairly early in the
reading. This is a fairly advanced idea for someone new to
programming.
Are you sure? I honestly don’t know, I’m just asking. I’m wondering
if it was hard because we are experienced programmers. Newcomers
don’t have that existing knowledge to overcome.
For example, iterators were quite a bit of adjustment for me when I
was new to Ruby. I think the main barrier for me though was mapping
all my old loop knowledge to the new way of doing things.
James Edward G. II
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As you’ve