If you're like me, you're reading this on your bright-red
custom-built laptop in a soothing rosemary-scented bubble bath, and
you're wondering, "Why do I want another interpreted programming
language? I can find my way around Perl and PHP and maybe a little
Python. And Unix shell scripting. I feel fine. Why do people keep talking about Ruby?"
Like so many of the very coolest things, Ruby was invented in
Japan in the '90s, although it is only recently picking up steam here. Ruby is purely object-oriented; even things like integers and
strings have intrinsic methods and properties. So, for example,
print "Webmonkey".reverse outputs "yeknombeW". It's a clean,
pretty language, with a flexible, predictable syntax that's easy to
read and write, and comfortable for people coming from Perl or C. It's
more than easy to learn and use though -- it's fun, especially if you
use Why?s (Poignant) Guide to
Ruby, an engrossing, whimsical adventure story that reads like a
collaboration between Stan Lem and
Ed Lear and just
happens to teach the reader Ruby (and the love of Ruby). [Note to
editor: can you get this guy to write for Webmonkey?]
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