Hey all,

I spotted Rugby mainly by looking at the "hello world" thread in Legacy. So I was wondering if it is actually worth learning? I am always looking for more ways to update my CV, but is Rugby wide-spread enough to warrent learning for any other reason than fun?

I do like the simplicity it seems to have, though if it's mainly just for things for me to use I guess I would be better going for a more mainstream language.

An eloquent language, seemingly. Simple yet profound, possibly? I think so.

I am new to Ruby myself, but I hold it as something special that I predict will grow at least to the level of Python, hopefully.

MattyD

A better question to ask is any programming language worth it? Google suggest gives us a clue. By going to Google suggest and typing in ruby on rails we get around 58,500,000 pages compare this to 21,700,000 pages for python and you can see that by a measure of 2 to 1 ruby is worth it.

Check it out for yourself http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

but is Rugby wide-spread enough to warrent learning for any other reason than fun.

Its not that well spread yet; still most popular in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

I use Ruby! It's easy to learn (if you know other languages, like python, it's REALLY easy). I would suggest this language to anyone.

A better question to ask is any programming language worth it? Google suggest gives us a clue. By going to Google suggest and typing in ruby on rails we get around 58,500,000 pages compare this to 21,700,000 pages for python and you can see that by a measure of 2 to 1 ruby is worth it.

Check it out for yourself http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

You cant just put ruby on rails in, it needs to be in quotes so you don't get gems and train related stuff back.


http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails%2C+python

Good example, look at the news stories assoicated with Python's peaks; all about Monty Python or snakes.

Hi,

What i see the problem with Ruby is server. We hardly find top hosting companies providing Ruby on their services. Even i have hosting company A1domainhosting.com and wehave Ruby on rails on our server as when we moved to new better and bigger server we asked support team to install Ruby on rails. BUt now to give access to this wehave give them SSH access for all those who wants to use Ruby on rails. Which we dont prefer due to server security.

I am a PHP guy and i really dont know how to get started with Ruby from my local server (win XP) any ideas. or links that will help me?

There is a 1-click-installer available at:

http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/

It should get you started. There are lots of tutorials around too; google will provide lots.

I have been learning Ruby myself recently. And I think its fantastic, I originally started with PHP so I am kind of clung to that language for the simple reason of I have more experience with it.

My favourite things about Ruby is the syntax that it provides that you just cannot get in PHP like blocks / iterators for instance.

5.times {
//Code to execute 5 times goes here.
}

OR

You can even write your own blocks, just as an example you could write your own "statement like" methods.

def myIf(expr)
if expr
yield #executes the code in the block
end
end

myIf(true) {
puts "It worked"
}

Obviously the example above is crap, but you get the basic idea of what can be done. You can even pass variables etc to the block of code.

Plus Ruby is not just limited to web apps, I know PHP isnt, but I would say creating a desktop app in Ruby just comes as standard really. You can just include things like GTK as a library and make a desktop app. What I mean is.... I think Ruby was made as just a language, whereas I think PHP was centered around the web from day one. Ruby seems more like the web came after the language etc.

I think I will stick with PHP for my web stuff though, simply because I am more use to it. But when I have had time to learn Ruby properly who knows I may switch full time.

Well, ok. Here's something we all could use. Back in the BBS days, some hosts offered email in ANSI. Thus, in the postings, my words could be, say yellow, while yours were green, and a 3rd poster Red, and so on until you run out of the basic colors.

But with ANSI, you can also control the *background*, ie highlite color of a font. So that we could have a whole nother set of posters with red on black, on green, on yellow... etc. And now the iterations are numerous enough to provide a custom color for each poster on most forums.

One these ANSI BBS lists, we *never* saw people get confused over just who said what. Can you do that with RUBY?

As a PHP coder with an honest question:
Can Ruby interface with MySQL?

It's a fun language designed with the programmer in mind. You can refer to my Ruby Study Notes, the way I learned Ruby.

Also, refer to the TIOBE index that gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages, every month. See the exponential growth in Ruby's popularity.

As a PHP coder with an honest question:
Can Ruby interface with MySQL?

Yes. In fact most Rails folks use MySQL

Most definitely learn Ruby! It's the most intuitive language I've ever used, as is demonstrated in this great tutorial, Rolling on Rails. It will get you up and running within the hour and have you interfacing with MySQL to make some simple web apps. I found it invaluable. The question is, why shouldn't you learn a language if you have the time to do so?

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