Ruby for Newbie?!

[Phil Tomson]

In article <acemml$9ed$1 at hfc.pacific.net.hk>,
Scrumpy  <reply at in_newsgroup.tks> wrote:
>jason at jvoegele.com (Jason Voegele) wrote in
>news:91acf731.0205200939.41e89a8f at posting.google.com: 
>
>> Scrumpy <reply at in_newsgroup.tks> wrote in message
>> news:<ac3maf$81p$2 at hfc.pacific.net.hk>... 

>> There is also RDE (Ruby Development Environment) for Windows.  Just
>> recently, someone released a Ruby plugin for Eclipse, which is a
>> development environment written in Java, which runs on Linux and other
>> platforms.  Of course, you also have Emacs and vi. :)
>
>:-P

Well, I use gvim and it's great.  It has syntax colorization, indentation, 
etc.

>
>>> 3/ GUI toolkits/libraries. My preference is towards using wxWindows.
>>> Python: wxPython, PyQt, PyGTK.
>>> RUBY: 
>> 
>> Ruby has FXRuby (FOX), RubyGnome (Gtk+), rbXPCOM (Mozilla XPToolkit),
>> Ruby/FLTK, Ruby/Qt, and Ruby/Tk.  More information at:
>> 
>> http://www.rubyide.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GUIFrameworkProject/GUICompariso
>> n 
>
>Very interesting! I'd never heard about some of those GUI toolkits like FOX 
>and FLTK. Definitely worth investigating! I was surprised how good the 
>reviewer made QT sound.

Both FOX and FLTK look very promising depending on your requirements.

>
>Ease of use, cross platform support and stability, licence and speed I 
>guess are what I'd consider when choosing a GUI toolkit.
>
>
>Webware is here http://webware.sourceforge.net/
>
>I read that mod_ruby is not very stable. Do you have any experience using 
>it?

I'm not a web programmer, so I can't give you a difinitive answer here: 
check the comp.lang.ruby archives to be sure.  Seems to me that there was 
a discussion a month or two back where some folks said they were using 
mod_ruby successfully in production environments and that it is robust.

>
>
>>> Is there an 'offical' Ruby binary for Windows? It looks like there
>>> are three unofficial ones created using three different compilers!
>> 
>> It depends on what you mean by 'official'.  The "de facto" official
>> Ruby binary for Windows is from "The Pragmatic Programmers", Dave
>> Thomas and Andrew Hunt.  You can find it here:
>> 
>> http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ruby-install.html
>> 
>> This version is now built using Microsoft Visual C++.  Previous
>> version were built with gcc/cygwin.  Windows binaries built with VC++,
>> gcc/cygwin, and mingw are all available for download.  You can also
>> download the source and build with any C compiler you'd like.
>
>Official as in it's a Matsumoto Yukihiro (or a sanctioned Ruby core 
>developer) certified binary, preferably released on http://www.ruby-
>lang.org/en/download.html.

Matz readily admits that he isn't a Windows kind of guy - he prefers and 
uses Linux.  So other folks tend to work on the Windows port(s).

>
>As per Python, the official Ruby Windows binary release would keep up to 
>date with, at least, the stable Ruby source release.
>
>Unfortunately the status of Pragmatic Programmer's Windows binary is alpha.

Did you try installing it?  I'm also not a Windows person, but I recently 
helped someone install Ruby (from RubyCentral) on their XP machine and I 
must say that it all went very smoothly.  The SciTE editor that comes with 
it seems to actually be pretty nice. 

>
>>> Finally, is there a good Ruby book aimed at newbie programmers (not 
>>> existing programmers new to Ruby)?
>> 
>> It has not yet been released, but Pete McBreen, author of "Software
>> Craftmanship", is currently writing a Ruby book aimed at newbie
>> programmers.  Until this book is completed, the next best thing would
>> be Dave Thomas' and Andrew Hunt's "Programming Ruby", which is
>> available online at:
>> 
>> http://www.rubycentral.com/book/
>
>I'd already looked at "Programming Ruby" in a local bookshop and found that 
>it's not an entry level programming book :)
>
>Once it's available, I would like to see Pete McBreen's "Learn
>how to be a software developer" book. Hopefully it'll be very Ruby centric 
>and available soon ;-)

As I said in a previous post, check out "Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 days", 
it might be what you're looking for.

Phil