Just a really general Question...

[Derek Derek]

hey guys,
listen, i am currently going to school for Graphic Design/ Web
Design. While going here, going through the classes, i realized that my
real love is for coding, and that stuff, much rather than the artistic
stuff. So i did some CSS and HTML, and very very little PHP .. and i
wanted to really learn a programing language, so i asked a friend who
knows various languages what he thought would be a great language to
learn and he led me to Ruby... he also recommended "Learn To Program" by
Chris Pine. I've been going through it, really grasping the stuff so
far, but i do have one BIG question ...

what can be done w/ Ruby outside of my Terminal? Like what stuff can i
look at to see what power Ruby has and what the point of learning this
is? I hope this isn't TOO stupid of a question .. any help/ feedback
would be awesome.. thank you!

Derek

 

[Jeremy McAnally]

http://www.rubyonrails.org/ is a web framework (sort of like PHP) that
is powered by Ruby. It runs sites like 43things and Amazon's UnSpun.
It's a pretty hot topic in the web development world right now.

You can develop GUI applications with Ruby, web services, middleware,
or pretty much anything you can do with most other languages. Perhaps
perusing www.rubyforge.org will give you a better idea of what Ruby
can do.

--Jeremy

P.S. - It's not a stupid question!

hey guys,
listen, i am currently going to school for Graphic Design/ Web
Design. While going here, going through the classes, i realized that my
real love is for coding, and that stuff, much rather than the artistic
stuff. So i did some CSS and HTML, and very very little PHP .. and i
wanted to really learn a programing language, so i asked a friend who
knows various languages what he thought would be a great language to
learn and he led me to Ruby... he also recommended "Learn To Program" by
Chris Pine. I've been going through it, really grasping the stuff so
far, but i do have one BIG question ...

what can be done w/ Ruby outside of my Terminal? Like what stuff can i
look at to see what power Ruby has and what the point of learning this
is? I hope this isn't TOO stupid of a question .. any help/ feedback
would be awesome.. thank you!

Derek

--
http://www.jeremymcanally.com/

My free Ruby e-book:
http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/

My blogs:
http://www.mrneighborly.com/
http://www.rubyinpractice.com/

 

[Derek Derek]

Your reply helped a little bit.. i guess what i really need to figure
out is what exactly programming is. All i've ever coded was CSS and
HTML, and as far as the programming stuf .. i've only made a contact
form with PHP, but further than that .. i really have no idea what
programming is or it's uses. Thank you anyway though.

 

[Robert Klemme]

Your reply helped a little bit.. i guess what i really need to figure
out is what exactly programming is. All i've ever coded was CSS and
HTML, and as far as the programming stuf .. i've only made a contact
form with PHP, but further than that .. i really have no idea what
programming is or it's uses. Thank you anyway though.

I guess then reading through a basic tutorial (or book) will help you.
Once you got the basics (maybe from Chris's tutorial) a book about data
structures and algorithms will be helpful as it will not only teach you
specific algorithms but also how to estimate complexity (i.e. runtime)
etc. After that maybe "Object Oriented Software Construction" by
Bertrand Meyer could be useful.

Kind regards

robert

 

[marksweiss]

Your reply helped a little bit.. i guess what i really need to figure
out is what exactly programming is. All i've ever coded was CSS and
HTML, and as far as the programming stuf .. i've only made a contact
form with PHP, but further than that .. i really have no idea what
programming is or it's uses. Thank you anyway though.

One incredibly oversimplified/overgeneralized response to this is,
"Programs model things, actions and processes in the real world," e.g.
- a program that simulates flying a plane or driving a car or tells
you where your car is based on a GPS device and a satellite
communicating with each other. Another equally simplistic response to
this is, "Programs receive input, process the input, and produce
output." e.g. - a program that reads a list of salaries from a
database, calculates a percentage raise for each employee, and then
stores the new salary figures back into the database.

While these are oversimplified conceptions, they are also quite
fundamental and true and encountered early on (implicitly if not
explicitly) in any effort to learn to program. These are also useful
signposts for programmers of all levels, being roughly analogous to
two fundamental questions any programmer must answer when designing
and coding anything, "What is this program supposed to do?" and "How
will this program do what it is supposed to do?"

Hope this helps and was at least in the neighborhood of the answer you
were looking for.

-- Mark

 

[Javier_CH]

programming is or it's uses. Thank you anyway though.

if you're a complete programming-newbie i would recommend to learn a
the object-oriented (oo) basics by learning an oo-language. alltough
ruby is an oo-language, there aren't as many great newbie-books as
you'll find for (let's say) java. a great book i can really recommend
if you're a complete programming newbie is "head first java":

http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Ja..._bbs_sr_1/103-2672874-3243066?ie=UTF8&s=books

I know, it's java and not ruby, but you'll learn a lot about oo-
programming you'll be able to use with other languages and i think if
your roots are in design this book will help you a lot in
understanding oo-programming. There are two other great books by the
head-first-series handling "design patterns" and "oo analysis and
design".

I don't think it's important in WHICH language you learn to program,
it's much more important to learn the principles of programming. Today
there's a lot of buzz about Ruby (imho legitimate buzz) but it's very
likely that there will be the same amount of buzz about another great
new language in a few years...so, as I said: don't concentrate on WHAT
language to learn but how you get to learn the principles of
programming.

Good luck and lots of fun building software!

 

[Derek Derek]

I guess then reading through a basic tutorial (or book) will help you.
Once you got the basics (maybe from Chris's tutorial) a book about data
structures and algorithms will be helpful as it will not only teach you
specific algorithms but also how to estimate complexity (i.e. runtime)
etc. After that maybe "Object Oriented Software Construction" by
Bertrand Meyer could be useful.

Kind regards

robert

By chris, you are referring to Chris Pine, right? Your reply realy
helped and really started to give me an idea of what i was getting
myself into ( it sounds awesome!) Those books sound good, and being
that i work at a bookstore, i can get really access to them! thanks
again...

 

[Derek Derek]

One incredibly oversimplified/overgeneralized response to this is,
"Programs model things, actions and processes in the real world," e.g.
- a program that simulates flying a plane or driving a car or tells
you where your car is based on a GPS device and a satellite
communicating with each other. Another equally simplistic response to
this is, "Programs receive input, process the input, and produce
output." e.g. - a program that reads a list of salaries from a
database, calculates a percentage raise for each employee, and then
stores the new salary figures back into the database.

While these are oversimplified conceptions, they are also quite
fundamental and true and encountered early on (implicitly if not
explicitly) in any effort to learn to program. These are also useful
signposts for programmers of all levels, being roughly analogous to
two fundamental questions any programmer must answer when designing
and coding anything, "What is this program supposed to do?" and "How
will this program do what it is supposed to do?"

Hope this helps and was at least in the neighborhood of the answer you
were looking for.

-- Mark

Mark,

haha, as over simplified as that was, it was exactly what i needed!
Things are a bit more clear now in terms of the POWER of programming and
it's need in the world. I work at a barnes and noble, so i have plenty
of books to read through, but the size of the programming area is
sometimes over whelming! Anyway, thank you again.

 

[Derek Derek]

if you're a complete programming-newbie i would recommend to learn a
the object-oriented (oo) basics by learning an oo-language. alltough
ruby is an oo-language, there aren't as many great newbie-books as
you'll find for (let's say) java. a great book i can really recommend
if you're a complete programming newbie is "head first java":

http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Ja..._bbs_sr_1/103-2672874-3243066?ie=UTF8&s=books

I know, it's java and not ruby, but you'll learn a lot about oo-
programming you'll be able to use with other languages and i think if
your roots are in design this book will help you a lot in
understanding oo-programming. There are two other great books by the
head-first-series handling "design patterns" and "oo analysis and
design".

I don't think it's important in WHICH language you learn to program,
it's much more important to learn the principles of programming. Today
there's a lot of buzz about Ruby (imho legitimate buzz) but it's very
likely that there will be the same amount of buzz about another great
new language in a few years...so, as I said: don't concentrate on WHAT
language to learn but how you get to learn the principles of
programming.

Good luck and lots of fun building software!

I actually used the Head First series for HTML and CSS. I really like
how simple it is to understand (sometimes, it is too simplely
explained), but i feel that is what i might need to get my feet wet with
this stuff. I appreciate your recommendations, thanks again!