----------------------------------- HyperFlexed Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:37 am Ruby... from Turing ----------------------------------- I decided to learn another language... I downloaded freeRide, but now I have no idea what to do. I've tried writing a few programs, but when I run them, the program crashes. I have a few questions. how do I declare a variable? how do I initialize a variable? how do I display something? how would this be written in Ruby? (put "A string mixed with ", aNumVar) Also, could someone show me the HelloWorld program in Ruby? I tried finding my own tuts, but damn. There is all this amazingly intimidating jargon all over the pages, and I don't know wtf is going on. ----------------------------------- Tony Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:22 am ----------------------------------- text = "hello world" puts text num = 3.1415 puts "pi is #{num}" :) ----------------------------------- HyperFlexed Sun Nov 21, 2004 12:56 pm ----------------------------------- wow... interesting. No formal varaible declarations. I have another question, are programming blocks in any way like procedures and functions? It would make sense because any variable "declared" in them are not global. thx alot btw.. I think when I get the hang of Ruby I'm going to write a big tutorial from an idiots POV. ----------------------------------- HyperFlexed Sun Nov 21, 2004 12:57 pm ----------------------------------- P.S, anyone know any good IDE's for Ruby? I'm not really liking FreeRIDE at all. Should it just run my programs? or do I have to install some kind of Ruby thingamajigger? ----------------------------------- wtd Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:15 pm ----------------------------------- P.S, anyone know any good IDE's for Ruby? I'm not really liking FreeRIDE at all. Should it just run my programs? or do I have to install some kind of Ruby thingamajigger? For learning the basics, use IRB. Start -> Run, then type "irb" and hit enter. ----------------------------------- HyperFlexed Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:18 pm ----------------------------------- P.S, anyone know any good IDE's for Ruby? I'm not really liking FreeRIDE at all. Should it just run my programs? or do I have to install some kind of Ruby thingamajigger? For learning the basics, use IRB. Start -> Run, then type "irb" and hit enter. ummmm... I think I need to install something first because that didn't work. ----------------------------------- wtd Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:28 pm ----------------------------------- wow... interesting. No formal varaible declarations. No, you don't have to declare variables. It can be a real time-saver. I have another question, are programming blocks in any way like procedures and functions? It would make sense because any variable "declared" in them are not global. Somewhat. There are a few ways of creating a block. We can either explicitly create a new Proc object: add = Proc.new { |a, b| a + b } We can use the lamnda method, which often jives better with math people: add = lambda { |a, b| a + b } And now, if we have a function which takes a block as an argument... The & indicates the argument is a block def two_and_two(&block) block.call(2, 4) end We can either call it using the existing block: two_and_two(add) Or we can pass it a new block: two_and_two { |a, b| a + b } The other way to use a block with a function is to "yield" the variables out to any block that might be included. def two_and_two yield 2, 2 end And we can call it in the same way: two_and_two { |a, b| a + b } The power of this, vs. other methods in other languages is... what if I want to multiply two and two? two_and_two { |a, b| a * b } ----------------------------------- wtd Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:30 pm ----------------------------------- P.S, anyone know any good IDE's for Ruby? I'm not really liking FreeRIDE at all. Should it just run my programs? or do I have to install some kind of Ruby thingamajigger? For learning the basics, use IRB. Start -> Run, then type "irb" and hit enter. ummmm... I think I need to install something first because that didn't work. http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl ----------------------------------- HyperFlexed Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:01 pm ----------------------------------- all those code examples, are all of those things keywords or something? ruby is very minimalist. I think it's retarted. ----------------------------------- Tony Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:25 pm ----------------------------------- I think you should take a break... *click click* We'll see you tomorrow :) ----------------------------------- wtd Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:41 pm ----------------------------------- all those code examples, are all of those things keywords or something? Only "def", "end", ".", and the basic "{ | | }" construct are part of the syntax. "Proc" is a class, "new" is a method of that class, "two_and_two" is a user-defined method, and "lambda" is a method of the Object class. ----------------------------------- Andy Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:00 pm ----------------------------------- ruby is very minimalist. I think it's retarted. the point of ruby was to be simple, so its not a pain to program ----------------------------------- wtd Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:17 pm ----------------------------------- ruby is very minimalist. I think it's retarted. the point of ruby was to be simple And don't forget flexible. :)