New to Ruby? Tips for the new Rubyist.
jasimabasheer.com
jasimabasheer.com
I finally pushed through but I suspect just getting things running is a big enough PITA to deter new people from participating in Ruby land. Even if Hannson says it's a myth.
As a beginner, trying to deploying a rails app to production from scratch is likely to drive you a bit crazy.
One problem is that their deb package doesn't specify ruby as a dependency. Another problem is that you have to examine their inlined bash install script to get to the .deb package to diagnose that. Another problem was that ubuntu's standard package repositories didn't include the version of ruby they needed (ruby1.9.1 - though I just checked now, and it seems to be available again). So I installed rvm, suggested by www.ruby-lang.org as an easy route, which needed me to install a whole bunch of other stuff, and finally installed the latest version of ruby - but this was too recent for their package to accept. sigh Eventually I found an old, undocumented gem of theirs that would install their command-line tool (well, half of it anyway). Maybe it's seamless if you already have ruby installed - but it's a terrible way to start ruby, in my experience anyway. Possibly it's more streamlined on Windows/Mac.
Then... all three versions of ruby that I tried (1.8, 1.9.1, 1.9.3) had changes that broke my tiny toy code. So astonishing, I'm not even mad.
Look at Python, with 5-year support for Python 2 before breaking compatibility with Python 3. And Java, well, I've never heard of code being broken (assert could have, but never heard it happen).
Ruby is labour-intensive - that's the price of constant (incompatible) improvement. Part of that price is documentation that goes out of date, instructions that go out of date, code that goes out of date. It becomes unrealistic to invest in Ruby - unless you plan to be working intensively on it anyway. Which I think does make sense for its original professional users, who are constantly iterating anyway. But it's not good for people who missed the early wave, when ruby was friendly.
It's a shame, because there's a lot of cool ideas in ruby and cool projects using it. I guess that's the trade-off. But, well, it took so much effort to get heroku installed that I haven't used ruby since.
I think you confuse your releases. Neither 1.8.7 nor 1.9.3 did break anything major. The only two releases with major breakage that should have affected you in recent years are 1.9.1 and 1.9.2.
The changes in ruby that break compatibility are listed in the release notes of every release.
> Look at Python, with 5-year support for Python 2 before breaking compatibility with Python 3. And Java, well, I've never heard of code being broken (assert could have, but never heard it happen).
Not sure what you mean about Python. Python has roughly the same policy as Ruby about API breaking changes.
The changes between Python 2.X and 3.X are also way larger than between Ruby 1.8.X and 1.9.X. Porting our code from 1.8 to 1.9 was not much work.
I'm just stating my (local) experience; I don't have a global god's-eye view of ruby. I'm not an expert in ruby; I'm just trying to get started. You seem to expect a beginner to know exactly which versions introduce a breaking change, and to read the release notes in detail - and understand them, which is difficult for someone who has not yet learnt ruby or its terminology.
When you start to have categories of breakage, as "major" or not, and defend porting code between versions as "not much work", it means you accept some breakage as normal. To me, a breaking change is one that causes code to stop working, and require extra labour. Python and Java don't do this (nor Windows, x86 or ARM).
Note that from 1.9.1 to 1.9.2 is not a major release. It's not even a point release. It's a point-point release with "major" breaking changes (according to you).
As I carefully said, this is a consequence of constant improvement (contrast with Java, c#, x86). (guessing: do you think it's partly due to the power of ruby making security harder?). The trade-off doesn't suit beginners. Note that back-compatibility is a "successful programming language problem" - no one complains if a toy language breaks. I'm just drawing attention to the downsides, because if uncorrected, in the long-term, it may lose the next generation of coders.
Look, I'm not out to attack Ruby; I like ruby. But this is a real problem. Disregarding it is a disservice to ruby.
Available for free online, though you can also pay for it if you'd like.
In languages like PHP, it's possible (again, this is becoming less common) to run an ad-hoc PHP application by simply requesting the URL to the file. For example:
* Drop myapp.php in to your httpd doc root
* Request http://myserver.tld/myapp.php
* Great success!
Rails doesn't work this way at all, and I don't know of an equivalent in the Ruby ecosystem. There is ERB, but no one runs a bare server that just maps myapp.rb to a URL; e.g., http://myserver.tld/myapp.rb. There's always some sort of router in between. Sinatra is probably the most basic Ruby app framework in common use and it still has a router. There are good reasons for this. In Ruby, everything is an object, so if you're writing good Ruby code, you need a way to map URLs to your objects.
Rails is somewhere between Java and mod_php in terms of application infrastructure complexity. The most important distinction is that you have an app server that is separate from your web server, and you have to do, at least, some basic configuration (even with Passenger). Many PHP devs never put any thought in to their server stack. PHP is part of their base Apache install on whatever shared host they're using, and everything "just works".
I'm trying really hard not to paint PHP devs in a bad light. All of this arrises from the circumstances you "grow up" in. There are plenty of PHP stacks that distinguish app worker processes from the web server, so please understand I'm not claiming some kind of superiority. To the contrary, the Ruby community recognizes the complexity penalty taken here, and is making efforts to develop easier ways to jump in to Ruby on Rails development.
This seems like a good topic for a blog post. I might write something up.
It's almost like you're intentionally missing the point just so you can talk about Java infrastructure. I'm not here to throw rocks at Java. I'm a big fan of the TorqueBox project, which brings a lot of the power and flexibility enjoyed by Java devs to Ruby. "Complexity" isn't necessarily a bad word. More options means more complex, but sometimes you need those options.
Books like that are fundamentally about taste and style and technique; they can't really be "wrong". You might disagree with the author and think you have a superior approach but to say that randomly googling the topic led you to a "better" explanation tells me that perhaps you were looking at the wrong book in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, your reply is kind of abstract and philosophical. I explained why this book just failed and should not be recommended (mainly the style and really, really awkward, wacky examples) and I face abstract replies. Sometimes I think these comments and Amazon reviews are all faked by SEO/Webspam people driving the book's sale (no offence, but because of guys like you recommending a totally weak book over and over without the slightest criticism I bought this crappy book and it's a really bad and frustrating experience). And again: I am not dumb or do not know what I wanted or bought (btw this is bad discussion style to implicitly question the buyer intent or skills, it was very indirect but still there).
Never mind that everyone here has been an HN member longer than you, but that is a very poor perspective to take. A rational person would note that a number of fairly successful programmers in their field are endorsing a book they had a bad opinion of and, at the least, go back and re-examine the foundations of that opinion. It's called humility and learning from those around you. But not you, oh no, you are absolutely right and everyone else is absolutely wrong and if they don't admit it they must be paid shills!
> Again the same discussion
The reason for that is that what you say is totally unconvincing, when it makes sense, which is not often. It is quite obvious, for example, that you bought the wrong kind of book, despite your inexplicable denials. You needed some kind of reference book or cookbook or something. You come across like this: "I bought Jamie Oliver's autobiography and it SUCKED! I needed a recipe for pancakes and I could find thousands on Google in seconds so why do I need that book!? That book is a stupid waste of money and anyone who says otherwise is a spammer! I did not buy the wrong book. I knew exactly what I wanted. I am not dumb"
> I am not dumb
The fact you feel the need to point this out doesn't speak well to how you come across in these discussions, does it?
You need to think about your attitude. Maybe instead of replying with some new inanity you should close the window, go outside, sit in the park or something, and think about some of the assumptions you are making when you cheerfully and thoughtlessly dismiss the advice and opinions of anyone who happens to disagree with yourself, especially the kind of talent who likes to hang out here. You might have an unpleasant realisation or two coming your way.
Great analogy!
The big one is ActiveSupport. There are many extensions to common Ruby objects like String, Enumerable, Hash, etc. For example. In Rails, you'll use something like this quite frequently:
some_string_var.parameterize
EDIT: My last paragraph isn't clear enough that you can use ActiveSupport outside of Rails by simply adding the gem to your Gemfile and requiring it in the relevant location. The downside is that you create a dependency. If you are writing ad hoc scripts, this can be an annoyance, but if you package all your scripts as a Gem using something like Thor, dependencies won't be a problem.
Not knocking Rails, it's just that you'll get a really narrow and somewhat skewed perception of Ruby if you learn it through Rails (you'll have no way of easily separating the Rails magic from plain Ruby as you learn things).
From the description it seems like he doesn't quite get the distinction himself, and one of the later examples is broken:
"Array.new.methods - Object.methods" should read "Array.new.methods - Object.new.methods". Otherwise he's in fact subtracting the methods available on an error instance from the methods available on an instance of Class, not the methods available on a generic object..
You are wrong, classes are objects :)
1.9.3p194 :084 > Object.new.methods - Object.methods
=> [] irb(0main):001:0> Object.methods - Object.new.methods
=> [:allocate, :new, ...]
Consider for example, a "Person" class with a single instance method "name". In this case, "Person.new.methods - Object.methods" will not include "name", because this happens to be a method that applies both to Person instances and the object Object. The correct comparison is what vidarh said, "Array.new.methods - Object.new.methods".
The author's main point, however, was that you can write code like "Array.new.methods" and "Object.methods" at all, and that you can write code to subtract them. And this example shows that nicely.
On the article, I strongly disagree that vim requires plugins to be viable for Ruby development. The Janus plugin should especially be carefully considered as it wraps up a lot of magic that could prevent the new vim user from effectively learning vim itself.
`while true` usually does it for me.
[1,2,3].index(1)
# => 0
[1,2,3].index(4)
# => nilI have spent the past three weeks getting my head into Ruby (on the hopeful way to understanding Rails). With so many different languages and stacks, it makes the early stages extremely daunting for a beginner.
I have found comfort in the following resources:
1) The only website I found that actually visualized how everything sits together: http://techiferous.com/2010/07/roadmap-for-learning-rails/
2) I persevered with a Ruby programming book: Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (by Peter Cooper)
3) Spent a few days on a zero install Ruby tutorial: http://tryruby.org
I plan to write some blog posts on the journey however may wait until I get passed the basics before sharing too much.
1. Who is actually new to Ruby?
(After Ruby or rather the popular RoR is there almost for a decade everyone should have made some experiences with Ruby, so I am wondering if there are many new Rubiest)
2. What new language/stack did you start to learn recently?
(for me: Node.js)
Opinions will differ, of course. Both languages are tops.
I suspect your comment is being buried for the pretentiousness of that question. Plenty of people are still new to Ruby, because you absolutely do not need Ruby to have a successful development career. Not to mention the population of individuals who are completely new to programming.
In my experience it is still vastly harder to hire someone with any degree of Ruby exposure vs. PHP developers, for example.
Ruby is still a niche language.