Introduction to Ruby for absolute beginners: Part one
My first encounter with Ruby was in 2011, I bought a book then a beginners guide to Ruby after my International Diploma in Computing from Informatics. Have heard about Ruby on Rails and how amazing it was for building website. And I was a big fan of 37 Signals, but I couldn't make through to my motivation to learn Ruby. Partly because so many companies in Nigeria wasn’t using it, the most popular in Nigeria then is PHP and .NET and I wasn’t really a fan of both. But to the long story short have spent the most part of the last four weeks writing Ruby.
Ruby is…
A dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.
- According to the official website
A case for Ruby
one of the dilemmas for newcomers in tech is what programming to choose from and where to start from. With a lot of new languages and framework calling your attention ot can be really hard to start. From my experience jumping from one language to another and really finding a place on time. I will advise you to learn Ruby.
- Learning Curve
It is really easy to learn and get productive with quickly. The Syntax is beautiful and more like the English language. There are different ways of accomplishing a task so you can always adapt the language to your own style and flair. - Maturity
The Ruby language is mature and stable with lot of Gems to achieve complex tasks. You are literally sitting on the shoulder of giants. - Ecosystem
The Ruby ecosystem is really huge with lot of experienced developers that can help you grow quickly. Ruby on Rails is one of the most popular web framework built in Ruby use by top organizations like Basecamp, Github, Stripe, Shopify and more. - Jobs
There are still lot of Ruby jobs out there in contrary to popular opinion that Ruby is dead.
This is just a quick Ruby job search in the UK. Ruby can also serve as a gateway to learn other language and technologies. Because of the low barrier and easy to learn nature you can use your knowledge of Ruby to learn new language. Because they are all the same concept with only different syntax and some different approaches to doing things.
Getting Started
Getting started with Ruby is as simple as setting up your computer much easier you even start now using Repl which I will advise you use for this tutorial. To speed up development follow this link you can also create an account to save all your work https://repl.it/languages/ruby
If you are feeling more adventurous and you want to have Ruby on your laptop, if you are using Mac, you already have Ruby preinstalled. Check out my previous post to set up IDE and other plugins to code locally.
For window, users follow this tutorial to get started.
How To Install Ruby and Set Up a Local Programming Environment on Windows 10
Thanks to following to the end. In part two I will assume you have all your environment ready to coding in Ruby. This tutorial will not be complete without writing a “Hello, World” programme in Ruby. as your guess will have it is as simple as typing puts "Hello, World" in Repl and run using the green run button. Yeah
