[prog] Ruby?

[Andrea Landaker]

> Just curious:  Is anyone using Ruby here, or interested in learning it?
>
> More info here for anyone who hasn't heard of it:
>   http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020101.html

I use Ruby!

I used to use Java and C++ (mainly because they were popular and classes and 
jobs required them), and tried to learn Perl, but I found it too annoying to 
read.  I've used Scheme and Pascal and Ada.  I've played around with PHP and 
Python.  But out of all these languages, to me Ruby is the easiest to use.  I 
spent two years at my job coding in Java; but even when I was just starting 
to learn Ruby, it was still faster to code in.  I've found it very intuitive, 
and the documentation online is very easy to use (especially www.ruby-doc.org 
and www.rubycentral.com).  

Of course, the code I write now is mainly for myself -- scripts and text 
processing and things like that.  I haven't done any real heavy-duty 
programming with Ruby (though my husband has quite often).

I would definitely recommend looking at Ruby -- just try using it the next 
time you have something kind of simple to write, and see if you aren't hooked 
into using it on bigger things in the future!  :-)

I also think a class would be a great idea . . . but my knowledge of Ruby is 
way too limited for me to teach it.  http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ and 
http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/ruby/0.3/ have tutorials that look pretty 
good.

-- 
Andrea Landaker
http://www.icecavern.net/~qirien/