# Suggestions for Nuby transition through "suck" stage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 17, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318 "2006-11-17T16:39:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/1 "2006-11-17T16:39:57Z")
I once read that in learning Ruby, there is a “suck” stage where it is difficult to accomplish much of anything, followed by a “Wow” stage where the Ruby N. “sees the light”. Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I’m historically a Unix scripter, haven’t spent a lot of time on languages like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather painful. Any areas to concentrate on?? TPL ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/2 "2006-11-17T16:42:34Z")
Thomas L. wrote: > I once read that in learning Ruby, there is a “suck” stage where it is > difficult to accomplish much of anything, followed by a “Wow” stage > where the Ruby N. “sees the light”. > > Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder > through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I’m > historically a Unix scripter, haven’t spent a lot of time on languages > like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather > painful. Any areas to concentrate on?? > > TPL Also, I have substantial amounts of experience coding pseudo-OO Fortran 95, so I do have some idea on how OO programming works (although not the depths of inheritance and other OO concepts that are not well implemented in Fortran 95). ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 4:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/3 "2006-11-17T16:56:34Z")
On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Thomas L. wrote: > Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder > through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I’m > historically a Unix scripter, haven’t spent a lot of time on languages Using what as your main development language then? That will tend to influence how you think about problems, and will help people know where you are coming from. > like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather Both those now use some kind of OO model, whereas (TTBOMK) most shells don’t have this aspect. Reading up on the various flavours of OO will seriously help understand how/why Ruby is put together the way it is. > painful. Any areas to concentrate on?? Also, tell us where it hurts. Obvious medical analogy in helping solve the problem. How are you getting on with the [online?] docs? Which aspects of them make your brain feel like cheese? > TPL ``` Hugh ``` ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 6:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/4 "2006-11-17T18:12:46Z")
Thomas L. wrote: > TPL I started learning Ruby after two years of programming experience in C++ and Java and as I remember it was quite painful - largely because I was so used to static typing. As a unix scripter you might need to get comfortable with objected oriented programming. For that you will need to read “Programming Ruby.” I also recommend that you become intimate with every method of Array, String and (to a lesser degree) Hash. Somewhere half-way to that point I went “wow.” Not to say that got me anywhere close to “pro” 🙂 Juozas G. ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/5 "2006-11-17T17:56:43Z")
Thomas L. wrote: > Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder > through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I never experienced the “suck” stage…it’s been wow all the way. I think that’s because I started off with the Pickaxe book. Experience with other programming languages helped some. Shell scripting was mainly useful as a motivation. If you have to maintain a congeries of shell scripts that call each other, you are powerfully motivated to seek a better way. Python also was a motivation. It was a language that looked great at first, but grew progressively more annoying as I got into it more deeply. By the end of my Python days, I had come to think of Python as the Pascal of scripting languages. I was delighted to find that Ruby did the right thing just about everywhere that Python irked me. Ruby is beauty and freedom. Or at least as much beauty and freedom as you are going to find in a scripting language! Knowing C was useful when it was time to peer into Ruby’s innards, but knowing C _well_ probably slowed me down. The big conceptual hurdle was to start thinking naturally in terms of dynamic OO. I didn’t mind, though, because my main goal at the time was to learn this way of thought. Knowing Lisp was helpful, as it had kept my mind from sinking into a procedural rut. What I remembered of Pascal was not useful at all. Of course, I’ve tried to forget as much as possible of that dreadful B&D language, which I had only learned because I was forced to teach it. (My experience with Pascal was mainly with the version that inspired Brian Kernighan’s famous paper _Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language_.I understand that more modern versions are not as horrible.) ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2006, 4:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/6 "2006-11-18T04:26:06Z")
Thomas L. wrote: > I once read that in learning Ruby, there is a “suck” stage where it is > difficult to accomplish much of anything, followed by a “Wow” stage > where the Ruby N. “sees the light”. > > Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder > through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I’m > historically a Unix scripter, haven’t spent a lot of time on languages > like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather > painful. Any areas to concentrate on?? It helps to have a concrete problem you need to solve. Do you have any somewhat generic task you would like to automate? Searching files for certain kinds of text strings was a good one for me to learn Ruby, although I still don’t use it as much as I ought. Processing large quantities of files from certain formats to certain other formats served a similar role in helping me learn Perl. What is it you would like to achieve with the language? ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/7 "2006-11-17T18:20:47Z")
Thomas L. wrote: / … > Also, I have substantial amounts of experience coding pseudo-OO Fortran > 95, so I do have some idea on how OO programming works (although not the > depths of inheritance and other OO concepts that are not well > implemented in Fortran 95). With that as a background, it’s clear that Ruby is quite far removed from languages you have used until now. In that case, I recommend that you acquire a copy of the pickaxe (“Programming Ruby”) book, and/or look at the online Ruby resources including the code examples in this newsgroup, using Google as your indexer. ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2006, 4:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/8 "2006-11-18T04:37:59Z")
Thomas L. wrote: > I once read that in learning Ruby, there is a “suck” stage where it is > difficult to accomplish much of anything, followed by a “Wow” stage > where the Ruby N. “sees the light”. > > Any hints/suggestions by you Ruby pros for me to expedite my flounder > through the “suck” stage, and achieve the Nirvana of “Wow”? I’m > historically a Unix scripter, haven’t spent a lot of time on languages > like Perl or Python, and am finding the transition to Ruby rather > painful. Any areas to concentrate on?? > > TPL It’s always struck me that the key to that nirvana seems to lie mostly in the meta-programming aspects of Ruby. Look at \_why’s stuff, study blocks, closures, \*eval, send, method\_missing, the various ways to dynamically add methods, etc. I think that the barrier to non-suckage is lower in Ruby than in most languages, so just have some patience. Be artful in your work and rethink every line if you have the time to do so. ---
**Author:** ![tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5e9695/32.png) [@tlockney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tlockney)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2006, 2:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/suggestions-for-nuby-transition-through-suck-stage/76318/9 "2006-11-20T14:47:46Z")
On Nov 17, 2006, at 11:55 AM, oinkoink wrote: > Python also was a motivation. It was a language that looked great > at first, but grew progressively more annoying as I got into it more > deeply. By the end of my Python days, I had come to think of Python > as the Pascal of scripting languages. I was delighted to find that > Ruby did the right thing just about everywhere that Python irked me. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has felt that way. I’m sure I wouldn’t appreciate Ruby nearly as much if I hadn’t slogged through with Python first. Tom