About my Ruby experiences

Is Ruby easy to learn?

Er... No, it isn't.

First point: There isn't a main documentation/tutorial/reference center where you can learn step by step all the Ruby nuances, from basic to advanced techniques.

There are, in fact, many sites and books and blogs and tutorials on Ruby, and they're different from each other, and you don't know where should you start from. Only one book is not enough to read. That turns the learning by yourself into a hard task.

Second point: The basics of Ruby are easy. Classes, objects, methods... things you've seen in other languages. You can code a lot from the basics.

But what makes Ruby a powerful language, the main motivation to choose Ruby among other good languages, is not in the basics. The power of Ruby is in the Metaprogramming. It is the ability to reopen classes, even core ones, and adapt them to your suits. It is the ability to redefine methods and create methods on-the-fly, and use all flexibility of the parameters to make the best fit to your goals. It is the ability to use Ruby to create DSLs. And that is not easy.

In this blog I do not intend to teach Ruby. I will share my experiences. And, as a scientist who likes challenges, I'll make many experiments... 8^)