Ruby

Why would I learn this language?

Ruby is a both powerful and easy to learn. It has a syntax which feels natural and is also very flexible.

Ruby is surrounded by a passionate community and there are a wide range of 3rd party libraries available. This makes it easy to develop new applications by relying on existing work.

Ruby is a cross platform development language with multiple implementations, including MRI (the default implementation), JRuby, IronRuby and Rubinius.

Starting Points

Try Ruby

An online interactive tutorial.

Learn to Program

A complete introduction for programming using Ruby including advice for students and teachers.

The Poignant Guide to Ruby

A fun illustrated introduction to programming using Ruby

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide

A tutorial and reference for the Ruby programming language.

Example Code

The following is an example of the 100 doors problem. You can run and edit this program here.

for n in 1..100
    if (n % 3 == 0) && (n % 5 == 0)
        puts "Fizzbuzz"
    elsif n % 3 == 0
        puts "Fizz"
    elsif n % 5 == 0
        puts "Buzz"
    else
        puts n
    end
end

The following is an example of the 100 doors problem. You can run and edit this program here.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

def doors n
	# Initialize an array
	doors = [false] * n

	# Process the doors
	(1..n).each do |inc|
		(inc..n).step(inc) do |d|
			doors[d] = !doors[d]
		end
	end

	# Print out the results
	doors.each_with_index do |b, i|
	    puts "Door \##{i} is #{b ? 'open' : 'closed'}."
	end
end

# Call the doors function with n = 100
doors(100)

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Ruby
• Ruby (Main Website)
• Ruby on Rails