# Ruby Newbie **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [January 13, 2008, 2:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898 "2008-01-13T14:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2008, 2:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/1 "2008-01-13T14:59:40Z")
Hi Everybody, I am en experienced programmer, I have been using VB since I have started programming. I wanted to shift to web programming but I dont know which programming language to start with. Somebody told me that Ruby is a very good programming language that I can start learning. I have friends and they told me that I start with JAVA instead, Now I am asking for your help so that I can be enlightened. Can I be a good web programmer or develop my own web application by only learning Ruby? Or do i need to start with JAVA and then Ruby? Please Help Thanks a lot… ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2008, 4:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/2 "2008-01-13T16:08:54Z")
Back in school they taught us how to code web application in Java, which entailed learning the J2EE technology set. It was a lot of work to do something very simple, and it wasn’t very fun. Frankly, I wouldn’t ever want to do it again. I’ve not played with PHP so I can’t tell you much about that. I have been doing Ruby on Rails now for a little over a year and I do recommend it. It’s fun, easy to learn, and is a pretty good gateway into the Ruby language (assuming you looking under the hood). Give it a shot. I think you’ll like it more than Java. James H. ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/3 "2008-01-13T19:20:25Z")
On Jan 13, 4:08 pm, James H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > [Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.] > I’ve not played with PHP so I can’t tell you much about that. I work both with Ruby (for my own applications) and PHP (for my web pages on the server of my university) and I must say that I am sorry I must use PHP since the web server does not have the Ruby module installed (and, of course, I cannot install it). Although I did not work with “Ruby on Rails”, I feel confident to suggest you to stick with Ruby (if you can). Ruby design is much more “coherent” and it implements quite well the “least surprise principle”. I cannot say the same about PHP, although, I must admit, that maybe PHP has a good amount of useful libraries (but I would bet that for most of them, you can find the Ruby equivalent). (please, PHP lovers, do not flame me! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2008, 10:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/4 "2008-01-13T22:08:30Z")
On Jan 13, 2008 7:59 AM, Kara C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hi Everybody, > > I am en experienced programmer, I have been using VB since I have > started programming. I wanted to shift to web programming but I dont > know which programming language to start with. Somebody told me that > Ruby is a very good programming language that I can start learning. I > have friends and they told me that I start with JAVA instead, Now I am > asking for your help so that I can be enlightened. Can I be a good web > programmer or develop my own web application by only learning Ruby? Or > do i need to start with JAVA and then Ruby? Please Help I went from Java to Ruby. Ruby suits me conceptually much better. It really depends on your purposes. If your intentions are professional, I suppose you should learn both (and if you happen to be really intelligent, at the same time 🙂 Seriously, though, you can find a lot of good web articles – some severely opinionated, some refreshingly not – by searching google with phrases like “java ruby difference” or “java vs ruby”; the former most likely turning up technical differences, the latter, personal opinions. hth, Todd ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 6:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/5 "2008-01-14T06:43:33Z")
On 13-Jan-08, at 5:59 AM, Kara C. wrote: > Hi Everybody, > > I am en experienced programmer, I have been using VB since I have > started programming. I wanted to shift to web programming but I dont > know which programming language to start with. Somebody told me that > Ruby is a very good programming language that I can start learning. I > have friends and they told me that I start with JAVA instead, Now I am > asking for your help so that I can be enlightened. Can I be a good web > programmer or develop my own web application by only learning Ruby? Or > do i need to start with JAVA and then Ruby? Please Help If “web programming” is what you want to do then I recommend starting with PHP. Any shared host or current OS install will probably support PHP out of the box and writing your first PHP web script can be as simple as: \ From there you can grow it up and the [http://php.net/](http://php.net/) documentation is excellent. To get started doing web development in Ruby is a bit more work, in fact an optimal way is probably to start with Rails (which does most of the heavy lifting for you) and then work backwards from there. Also, the online Ruby docs are considerably less beginner-forgiving that the PHP docs but then again you have this list 😉 That said, if you want to become enamoured of a language and have a ton of fun simply learning further programming for the sake of programming, I’d start with Ruby and the command line. A first script can be as simple as: ~/: ruby -e “puts "Hello world"” or ~/: ruby hello\_world.rb I personally would not start with Java. Perhaps later if neither Ruby nor PHP touch you, but to start with Java might make you think that web programming requires tedium and dreariness before the fun sets in and that just ain’t so. Hope that helps, Chris ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 8:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/6 "2008-01-14T08:34:40Z")
> If “web programming” is what you want to do then I recommend starting > with PHP. Any shared host or current OS install will probably support > PHP out of the box and writing your first PHP web script can be as > simple as: > From there you can grow it up and the [http://php.net/](http://php.net/) documentation > is excellent. I have to STRONGLY DISAGREE. I would NOT recommend learning PHP because it as an ABSOLUTELY AWFUL LANGUAGE. If you “learn” it first, you will CUT YOURSELF OFF from an entire range of approaches, thinking and solutions! (If you’re making a living on PHP, use it: if you want to learn, look elsewhere–it’s easier to “scale thinking” down than to try and scale it up late.) (Talking about the design, not how “practical” it is because every $2 web-host supports PHP 4/5. If you feel like “debating” how well PHP is as a -language-, look up create\_function() and provide a valid argument for the implementation.) Besides, the PHP documentation has to be the worst site ever. It also promotes bad practices. If you like the “embedded approach” that PHP encourages, there are PLENTY of frameworks out there that will allow you write a mash of something that is hard to maintain. Some people like mixing things. Others don’t. The thing is, almost every OTHER language (save PHP, CF, JSP and a few more I’m sure) allows you do to this without establishing it “as the way”. > To get started doing web development in Ruby is a bit more work, in > fact an optimal way is probably to start with Rails (which does most > of the heavy lifting for you) and then work backwards from there. > Also, the online Ruby docs are considerably less beginner-forgiving > that the PHP docs but then again you have this list 😉 Ruby is not Rails. Rails is not Ruby. Rails is just the most popular Ruby web framework. You can’t compare Ruby to PHP in this sense. It would be slightly more useful to compare Rails vs. Cake (or whatever else you have). There are MANY ruby web frameworks that are much easier to “whip out small projects” (esp. assuming that you are a beginner that hasn’t learned the “The Rails Way”) than Rails. > That said, if you want to become enamoured of a language and have a > ton of fun simply learning further programming for the sake of > programming, I’d start with Ruby and the command line. A first script > can be as simple as: Ruby is a fun language and you’ll learn many new constructs (coming from VB) if you learn it. Ruby will teach you to code in ways that simply aren’t feasible in PHP. You’ll learn about powerful dynamic OO, closures/blocks, mixins, singleton-methods, functional syntax, duck-typing, how easy creating a DSL should be, testing, etc… Ruby even comes with this nifty program called “irb” so you can try things interactively. You can also get a start at [http://tryruby.hobix.com](http://tryruby.hobix.com). (If you have a crazy sense of humor, \_why might just make you learn Ruby as an excuse to keep up with his crazy antics…) > I personally would not start with Java. Perhaps later if neither Ruby > nor PHP touch you, but to start with Java might make you think that > web programming requires tedium and dreariness before the fun sets in > and that just ain’t so. I would avoid starting with Java as well. Java is a _mediocre_ OO language at best and the boilerplate will make you cry–as far as a language, it really teaches nil. (For much better statically/strongly typed languages, see Scala, Eiffel and various ML implementations as examples). That being said, the JVM is the best cross-platform VM I know about. Which is why JRuby (yes, Ruby that runs in, and can interact with, “Java”) runs on it 🙂 There are MANY languages out there. Unless you are (or will be) paid for using a crappy language, don’t use it. It’s not fun. And you’ll be cramped in the limited language space. Learn -good- techniques while you can. The more -good- approaches you know the better you can code. Languages to look at (in no particular order, just a small random list that comes to the top of my head of languages that can teach you things–google will provided hundred of languages with multiple variations if you ask): Io, Scala, Lisp/Scheme, F#, Ruby, Python, Perl, Self, Smalltalk, Groovy There are also a million Ruby frameworks. Merb. Wuby. Ramaze. Rack+whatever, Camping, Sinatra, Rails, Nitro/Og, etc, etc. Each framework has its own design ideals. Some are huge, some are small. But, with the core separation the choice is truly up to you for what fits your current (web) project. Opinionated: yes. ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 9:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/7 "2008-01-14T09:14:37Z")
With all due respect, your response is precisely why I qualified mine by breaking it down into just learning to do “web programming” and an alternate language-specific recommendation if the OP wants to learn to actually “program” (with all the ivory tower, religious zealotry that that particular statement engenders). Paul S. wrote: > If you feel like “debating” how well PHP is as a -language-, look up > create\_function() As a matter of fact I don’t want to debate any such straw-man argument ever again in my life. I grew tired of the language wars about a decade ago. However the OP wasn’t asking that particular question, you’ve just read my response through your bias and exploded quite spectacularly in the wrong direction. Had the OP written: “I want to learn to program, to become a better programmer, which language should I look at next?” then I’d probably have suggested Ruby first and then… well that ought to be sufficient to occupy them for the next couple of years. But that’s not what was asked, was it now? Cheers, C= ---
**Author:** ![kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kara](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kara)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie/125898/8 "2008-01-15T19:14:43Z")
If I had a penny for every time I saw some awful code influenced by learning awful languages (and yes, this includes my code too)… I stand by by answer. Do not learn poorly-designed languages unless there is a direct gain from it (eg: to put food on the table). It’s easier to learn than to unlearn. Thank you for not kicking the straw-man. That was uncalled for on my part. As far as not answering the original question, I beg to differ: > Can I be a good web > programmer or develop my own web application by only learning Ruby? Or > do i need to start with JAVA and then Ruby? (I feel that I also covered most of the implicit non-questions culminating with: “…so that I can be enlightened”.)