QuickStart Ruby                                  

by George McNeal

Step-by-step instructions for learning to program in Ruby

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 About the language                                                    

Name:	Ruby
Year created:	February 24, 1993
Created by:	Yukihiro Matsumoto
Paradigm:	Object-oriented
Platform:	Developed on Linux, but works on many types of UNIX, DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, MacOS, BeOS, OS/2
Domain:	Ruby can be used to write servers, to experiment with prototypes, and everyday programming tasks. As a fully integrated object-oriented language, Ruby scales well.
Advantages:	Ruby is good at text processing. Everything in Ruby is an object.
Disadvantages:	Lack of CPAN like library archive is a weakness.
Specification:	Core API These are the API documents for the base classes and modules in the current stable release.
Grammar:	General Syntax Rules http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html#1 http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ruby-doc-bundle/Manual/man-1.4/syntax.html

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Step 1. Download and install the latest stable release of Ruby

• The latest stable release of Ruby is ruby-1.8.3.
• A simple download http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/4174/ruby182-15.exe that contains everything you need to run Ruby under various Windows operating systems.
• If you have Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), then you already have Ruby on your system.
• If you are running Linux, check to see if you have Ruby installed already. Type “which ruby”. If it says something like /usr/bin/which: no ruby in (…), then you need to download Ruby ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/ruby-1.8.3.tar.gz , otherwise see what version of Ruby you are running with ruby –v.

Step 2. Write a "hello world" program

• Open Program > Accessories > Command Prompt
• Type ruby
• Type puts “Hello, World”
• Type CRL_D
• Hello, World is sent to console.

Step 3. Interactive Tutorial
http://www.ruby.ch/tutorial/
 

 Learning more                                                        

There is a vast amount of information available on the Internet.  Some of the best sources are:

• Standard Library API These are the API documents for the standard library classes and modules in the current stable release.

· Learning Ruby

· Programming Ruby

· RubyGems A gem is a packaged Ruby application or library. It has a name (e.g. rake) and a version (e.g. 0.4.16). Gems are managed on your computer using the gem command. You can install, remove, and query (among other things) gem packages using the gem command. Get it from RubyForge and run (as root, if appropriate and necessary) ruby setup.rb It’s easy. It installs the required library files and the gem command. This command gives us the power to do everything else in this document, except distribute gems (for now!).

· Ruby on rails Rails is a web-application and persistence framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web-applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern of separation. This pattern splits the view (also called the presentation) into "dumb" templates that are primarily responsible for inserting pre-built data in between HTML tags. The model contains the "smart" domain objects (such as Account, Product, Person, Post) that holds all the business logic and knows how to persist themselves to a database. The controller handles the incoming requests (such as Save New Account, Update Product, Show Post) by manipulating the model and directing data to the view Here’s how you install Rails using Ruby Gems: Get hold of RubyGems 0.8.11 (or higher)

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