Is RUBY what I'm looking for?

[Guaton Carcass]

Hello!!!!

I have a question, that I hope someone will answer according to what I
expect, or basically to what I'm asking.

I'm a Graphic designer completely new to programmnig languages, but I've
been studying hard the basis and as long as it refers to "theory" I
really understand the concepts of arrays, classes, objects, looping,
operators, functions and whatever you expect from a common programming
language.
BUT! as I said before I'm a graphic designer, I see the world through
symbols and images. I've been doing a lot of small applications that I
need for my research (related with manipulation of graphic interfaces
oriented to handicapped people), I need a language with a rich VISUAL
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT (once again, I'm a graphic designer), I already
spent too much time thinking in the projects and I don't want to spend
even more time just coding. Of course not only a visual environment, but
also a with a great deal of multimedia manipulation. For example,
RealBASIC has a very good development envinronment and can compile for
Mac, Windows and Linux, but lack of multimedia features, that....ok ok
you can do things, but you have to code much more. There is a multimedia
solution MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX, a kind of Flash on steroids, it has
many (actually it is its main purpose) multimedia features, works with a
very high leval scripting language called LINGO,a dn it can compile to
Mac and Windows, but it lacks of many features from a proper and robust
programming language. C and its derivatives are strong, but, ok, ok, I'M
a graphic designer!!! I was checking Python, but clicking and clicking I
found Ruby, I got captivated by its syntax and simplicity.

Everybody is talking a great deal about RUBY, and I don't know if it is
what I'm looking for. Can it be developed in a rich visual environment,
can it be integrated into the OSX (as you may expect (cause I'm a visual
person) I use Macintosh).

I hope someone will answer my question with "ruby" features, simple,
elegant, and direct.

Bye, thanks in advance.

 

[Cyrus Ghalambor]

The best person that can give you that answer is yourself. And
fortunately Ruby allows you to do that quickly.

I recommend that you download a tiral version of Komodo (an IDE for
dynamic languages with recent Ruby support). And you should already have
Ruby on your Mac. Then write a few simple programs that help you solve
problems in your space and see where it goes. The good thing with Ruby
is that there's an energetic and active community around it with lots of
free libraries and good forums.

Good luck.

 

[Guaton Carcass]

Thanks a lot !

Actually i've been checking a lot Ruby lately, and It seems perfect for
me, on a syntac context. I'm not sure about the IDE, but I think I'll
give a try, specially that it's beena anounced that Xcode 3 will have
Ruby support.

Thanks again.