"How I Learned Ruby" by jvoorhis

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:22:00 NZST

This morning after refreshing my blogroll, I noticed that I had received a chain letter. Here is my response.

What was your technical background before you started learning Ruby/Rails?

My earliest flirtations with web development involved Perl and MySQL, and my first professional programming job involved PHP and Microsoft SQL Server. I later moved on to working with .NET on Windows. While Visual Studio was sometimes inescapable, I claimed the Mono platform and Emacs as my development environment whenever I could.

How long ago did you start?

I have programmed professionally since 2003. I have been a full-time professional Rails developer since March 2005.

What were the two most useful resources to you in the learning process (not counting The Agile Book or the Pickaxe Book, which we’ll assume everyone knows about)?

Regarding learning the Ruby langauge, the most helpful resources have been community-based. Ruby Quiz, the #ruby-lang channel on freenode.net, the Ruby Talk mailing list (although I mostly browse the archives), fellow bloggers, and the erratic Poingant Guide to Ruby.

Because the Ruby language has such varied influences, it also helps to understand them as well. Many folks who see Ruby for the first time comment that is looks “Perlish”. On the surface level it bears a resemblance, but my nominal experiences with languages like Scheme and Smalltalk have contributed more to my mental model of Ruby than Perl.

Tell us the story of how you came to learn Rails:

Prior to Rails, I had been experimenting with Nant, NUnit, NHibernate and different approaches to the model-view-controller architecture on .NET. Rails was a natural fit because it encompassed a familiar toolset, but in a smaller, more easily comprehended package.

Three Ruby bloggers to whom you’re passing the baton:

jvoorhis comments on How I Learned Ruby

"How I Learned Ruby" by jvoorhis