Whys ruby tutorial

I'm currently hunting Ruby roles in Europe that will sponsor a visa to move continents and it seems like recruiters do not have a lot of roles open for Ruby. Maybe this has something to do with the few Ruby giants not taking CVs from recruiters, but those giants aren't calling me back either. Broad generalisations incoming: I don't see a lot of new and exciting things being done in Ruby, and I don't think it's a popular choice for highly technical companies any more; even if you find one company doing cool stuff with it, do you want to be looking for a job in 5 years' time having spent 5 years in Ruby?

Rails is still the fastest way to bang out a CRUD webapp, and there's a lot of companies who use those webapps for critical parts of their business - but those also tend to be companies that are not primarily technical, for whom this is more of a cost center than a profit center and who may well have outsourced the original creation of the app and then barely maintained it.

So while you could probably make a career as "the tech guy" at that kind of company, it's likely to be an unrewarding position with limited opportunity for growth. On the other hand, it might be a stable position, particularly with a big company in a lucrative industry like finance. Consulting for companies like that has more potential, but only if you're good at negotiation, as you'll likely face a lot of clients who want to nickel-and-dime you.

Well there's all the companies that were built around with Ruby, when Rails was hot stuff. Many of them can't afford migrating to a new stack, or want to. But generally I kinda agree - more is being created with other stack nowadays.

Outsourcing a Python project is gonna be way easier 10 years from now than doing the same with Ruby. I don't have clear answers btw, there's just pros and cons. Right, so either you're working for a struggling company, or you're working on the old stack while things are gradually being migrated and most new stuff is being done in a different stack. Maybe you'd find a company that is sticking with Ruby because they like it, but that's pretty rare, and probably means that company hasn't scaled past a certain point.

Well if it's hard to replace you in your current position then that cuts both ways. So you might be able to find a comfortable position, but there won't be much opportunity for growth. Just a Ruby company that's doing well. I'm sure there's more of them.

It's not as if the idea of a rewrite was never thrown, but honestly why would they? It would take years, all the while your old dev team needs to pick up a new language and your new hires need to pick up both Ruby and the rewrite language.

If the whole architecture was service oriented that may be not too bad but many Ruby companies are running a few big monoliths.

Besides, this whole idea of lack of Ruby jobs seems weird to me especially if you're from North America. Mainland Europe is a different beast though. Well, if a company is successfully running a Ruby monolith without hitting the scaling problems that would make it start cutting out services to implement in other languages then that suggests the company either hasn't grown past a certain point, or isn't doing anything particularly heavy technically. That's a controversial topic though.

Keep in mind that companies like Github and Shopify showed us it's damn well possible to scale massively with a monolith. I think it makes for an environment that may be comfortable, but one where it's harder for a technical person to grow. It's not just about scaling, it suggests the company doesn't have major technical challenges - in which case the company probably isn't technically innovative which doesn't make it a bad company or a bad business, but does make it a bad environment to pursue a purely technical career.

Of course scaling isn't the only way to get interesting technical problems, but I've not seen people favour Ruby for heavy algorithmic work or anything like that either though I'd stand to be corrected - rather the great strength of Ruby is rapidly rolling out UI, so it tends to be chosen for problems where the UI is a large proportion of the thing you're building.

I think you have a somewhat different understanding than I do on what software devs do most days. If you happen to have a problem that's purely algorithmic let's say finding the shortest path on some map , the first thing most devs I know would do is look for an open source solution for that and if one doesn't exist in Ruby, you can always wrap it in a Ruby API. That's what I know about most of software engineering, you have a different take now of course there are different fields like embedded etc which I'm not referring to, I speak only of high level business logic coding.

I'd be surprised. I'd expect they'll implement it in something else and interface to it in Ruby. I wouldn't expect to do serious algorithmic work every day or even every month, but I think if a company is truly technical then it should be doing something that goes a little beyond what's in pre-packaged libraries, and that's often the most fulfilling part of the job.

Shopify along with its millions of shops is probably the biggest user of Rails with Ruby in production. Aside from them, not sure who uses Ruby at that scale. Pay is excellent. I learned basically nothing from this book. Maybe if I were a new programmer it would have helped but as an experienced programmer I found its pedagogy too distracting to learn anything. But Ruby is easy to learn and fun to use. The headline about it is that code can be executed in a class definition.

If that's not broadcast right at the beginning, it'll take a long time to learn what's going on in Rails. I don't think I learnt any code from this book, but it's still my favourite programming book by far. UncleOxidant 12 months ago prev next [—]. Anyone know where that got up to? Unless I'm confusing with another similar thing around the same time, there was some JS involved and you could find hidden features layered on regular websites.

I remember that too, but I thought it was called hoodwinked or something close to that. Would love to buy just the book. Me too. The "magic" of Ruby is the reason I begin with, and it's also the reason i stop using Ruby. Enough magic is fine, productive, but too much magic Imagine making your own magic with Ruby will make you hurt. I love the whimsical style of this book. I learn't my first Ruby with Why's guide and will always be grateful. For me the most important point is the simplest: that learning things should be fun.

We're too serious about lots of things, making it fun not only makes the process more enjoyable - it's more effective too. This book always brings back good memories for me. Sloppy 12 months ago prev next [—]. For me, this is one of those quintessential software books.

I've tried Ruby and RoR, which, while I've never used it professionally, has had a huge impact on the whole realm of web application development that I'm into , but I never fully understood it. Made a first RoR app from a book, but when trying to deploy it I ran into a minor issue probably wrong database configuration , apparently I had to restart the application but the webhoster I used did not give access to restart the thing so I just sighed, gave up, and went back to PHP.

I miss why. He was great to work with. His mind worked in differently than anyone I've worked with. He was still so nice, humble and a good teacher. Famous for Ruby, he could twist any language to solve a problem - or twist it just for the fun of it. The writing style always reminded me of my favorite teachers as a child. I always suspected that ROR's popular with young programmers in the 's had more to do with Why's writing style than specific merits of ROR.

He reminded me of the Beagle Bros books for the Apple II, which were my first introduction to programming in or so. I still share this every time someone is new to Ruby. He's a really good story teller which is all the more impressive given that code is involved I still love Ruby and use it all the time.

Added above. JohnBooty 12 months ago parent prev next [—]. I love Ruby and have been working with it full-time since Additionally, I would say that my taste in humor and art tends towards the wacky and whimsical, and even twee sometimes I suppose. But, like you Among other issues I had, is that it begins I'm paraphrasing by describing Ruby as a seamless and intuitive extension of one's brain.

Now, I love Ruby, and think it's admirably friendly, but you still need a solid handle on basic computer science concepts to be good at it, and maaaaan there's a lot of unintuitive Ruby stuff out there and you hit it extremely quickly as soon as you venture outside of the standard library Even conventions like affixing?

Tomte 12 months ago root parent next [—]. Such a delight. I understand how you feel personally, I really liked the book. I think it depends on your goal. If your goal is to just "get on with things" and essential read something more akin to a reference manual or a focused tutorial without any fluff, then yes, Why's guide is not appropriate.

While I enjoyed Why's guide, I found the Little Schemer book to be somewhat impenetrable in contrast. This book is an art piece. That works for some people! Not others! Lots of people enjoyed this book. My brain just rebels against this style. But it did have the effect of turning me off Ruby permanently. Seems a little suspect to blame this book, when there were plenty of other excellent resources for learning Ruby at the time, and this one was obviously a little offbeat.

For what it's worth I had the same experience with this book, but instead of blaming an artist whose book inspired thousands of Ruby programmers because it didn't inspire me, I moved on and got the Pragmatic Programmer's Ruby book instead, and I've had nearly 15 years of joyous Ruby programming in my career since.

I'd say the main cause of you not learning Ruby was not this book, but your own behavior. If you already know how to code but are learning Ruby, it's not a good book lot of fluff. But if you are learning to code for the first time it's good.

This was my case in I admit the comedy style is showing its age—a little cringe now. A book which stops you learning Ruby is in fact an excellent book. I've been trying to figure out at which point ruby turned from hero into villain, but I feel like it's more a generation gap rather than some series of acute moments.

Suddenly your large monolith app that has been fine for years falls apart. So you rush out and higher 10 react developers, 10 go developers, and 10 support engineers to try and write a micro service replacement while keeping the ruby app alive long enough to finish the rewrite. Oh and an elixir developer somehow managed to sneak in. Meanwhile your original 2 Ruby developers moved on, and their replacements are treated like dirt since Ruby Is on the way out Lammy 12 months ago root parent prev next [—].

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I love the way that, for example, this bit of story just drops into tutorial mode with no fan-fare. And also I learned a couple new Ruby tricks, which was cool -- I previously had no idea about most of the crazy useful global variables, for instance.

The book doesn't really have any practical code examples, unless you have a real use-case for umop-apisdn fxaf. Should it? Not really, no -- I think the point is just to have fun doing silly stuff with code something Ruby is very good for. But I wonder how accessible it all is. The Poignant Guide at some places seems like it's concerned with teaching people new to programming, using vivid metaphors for different bits of syntax -- an array [1,2,3,4] is a caterpillar between two staples the commas are its legs -- but even from the beginning the examples have a programmer mindset that's intimate with directory structures and file names, and that's very fastidious and precise about chopping up strings of text and manipulating them, always mindful of whitespace and linebreaks -- a brain that already thinks like a compiler.

So I'm not sure I'd recommend this book as a programming introduction, which is a bit of a shame. But then you probably shouldn't learn Ruby as a first language, if only because it'll spoil you for anything else with all its syntactic sugar and custom loop functions. Still, a worthwhile read, probably best for someone who knows programming, wants to get into Ruby and has a high tolerance for whimsy.

Mar 31, Lee rated it really liked it. This is a very entertaining introduction to Ruby, and it covers many key concepts. I don't think it was quite comprehensive enough: when I was learning, I had to heavily really upon the API, blogs, and other web resources to make enough sense of the concepts to apply them, but when you know enough background to understand all of the concepts, the book has little value over entertainment.

That said, it's funny; it's lighthearted; and it approaches programming in a new way. The Ruby community is kn This is a very entertaining introduction to Ruby, and it covers many key concepts. The Ruby community is known for its friendliness even having the motto of MINSWAN, "Matz is nice, so we are nice" , and this is a great introduction to a community that doesn't take itself too seriously. Jun 03, Anton Antonov rated it it was ok Shelves: technical. Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby is a book that has been on my list for months.

I've been going in and out the book trying to find inspiration to finish it but always coming short. Today I finally gathered enough insanity to finish it. My opinion on the book hasn't changed. While it's one of a kind, highly creative and maybe entertaining to some people, the book does a poor job at explaining anything. I dare to say that the book isn't that accurate either.

It lacks exercises, has weird code examples a Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby is a book that has been on my list for months.

It lacks exercises, has weird code examples and explanatory paragraphs mixed with fiction that in the end pass no message to the reader. Also the code style is not Ruby style guides compliant. Not the best idea to teach beginners bad style before they know anything about Ruby. If you have motivation but not enough to finish a whole programming book, there are the O'Reilly Head First books that can keep you occupied and interested without too much side fiction.

I just can't recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn Ruby and programming. Lack motivation? Mar 18, Mike rated it really liked it. I don't think there exists another programming book in the world that mixes comics, literature, and code examples into such a strange and interesting and unfortunately unfinished stew. Of course it's made even more interesting due to the author's "infosuicide" once his real identity was "outed" he's always saying in the book he might burn out and blow his head off one day.

Once it gets going and you see what the book is, the story line and comics slowly draw you in; I found myself really lik I don't think there exists another programming book in the world that mixes comics, literature, and code examples into such a strange and interesting and unfortunately unfinished stew. Hopefully one day he'll resurrect himself and finish it off and update it to Ruby 2. Dec 31, Daniel rated it really liked it. A truly strange book about life, programming and everything between.

It's a strange book, by a strange man, but if you're up for a challenge I recommend reading it. I found a mirror of it and read the whole work in about two weeks. The book is a mix of a strange journey in space, richly illustrated and who will show you some basic fundamentals in Ruby.

Jul 26, Senthil Kumaran rated it really liked it. Poigant means that something is s so beautiful that tears shed from eyes. In this case, the author says that Ruby code is so beautiful that tears will shed from your eyes when you read it. Yukihiro Matsumoto created Ruby in but I came to know about in the context of a web development framework called Rails. This book, thankfully does not teach you rails, but instead teaches you the Ruby Language, which in my opinion is a greater aim to have.

Author cheerfully says that "Ruby" is the computer's lan Poigant means that something is s so beautiful that tears shed from eyes. Author cheerfully says that "Ruby" is the computer's language and we are the translators for the world.

Also goes about explaining the concepts in more non-programmer approachable manner like "If variables and constants are nouns then methods are verbs". Mar 30, Anderson Evans rated it it was amazing Shelves: programming-books.

I think this is an important book. Often I feel like the programs are vague, and the train-of-thought infused pseudo-storylines often lose me They can occur anywhere.

If you run the code, you see that the comments are ignored by the interpreter, and your output only includes the two puts statements. In Ruby, functions are declared using the def keyword. The function syntax looks like this:. When calling a function in Ruby, the parentheses are optional. We could also write the previous example like this:.

Learn Ruby for free without scrubbing through videos or documentation. When programming, we often want to check for a certain condition, and then based on that condition, perform one action or another. These are called conditionals. Note : The elsif and else statements and branches are optional, but there must be an if statement and branch.

So, instead of doing this:. This is a great example of the readable syntax of Ruby. Not only does the second example save us two lines, it reads very well! Again, we can append the unless statement to the end of the line. These two are the same:. In Ruby, when you define or execute a method, you can omit the parentheses.

The following two lines of code mean exactly the same thing:. Great question! Use parentheses for all method calls that take arguments, except for puts , p , require , and include.

In object-oriented programming, classes are like blueprints for creating objects and methods that relate to those objects. The objects are called instances. We use uppercase letters to name our classes, so instead of color , we use Color. For class names that consist of several words, we use CamelCase , with the first letter of each word being capitalized. Since Ruby is object-oriented, we work with objects. We can think of objects as doing two things: objects know things, and objects can do things.

For example, a string holds a group of characters, but it can also perform an action onto those characters. The str. A constant in Ruby is a type of variable. They always start with an uppercase letter and can only be defined outside of methods.

Ruby supports a large set of operators. Ruby is an in-demand programming language, so becoming familiar with the language will help you build long-lasting skills for your career development. Some recommended concepts to cover next are:.