rubytarball.tar.gz

Do you want to be an interpreted language geek? Are you tired of getting entangled in the dense syntaxes? Does it irritate you to compile your code to machine language first? Are you looking for an easy-to-use scripting language? Well, Ruby is the best pick for you then!

Ruby is a smart, easy-to-use, functional, Object-Oriented programming language, which comes as a wondrous mix of Perl's scripting power, Pythonic capabilities and much more! As Matsumoto, creator of Ruby, implies: "I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language."

This introductory course will be providing you with hands-on practice with the support of a bunch of interactive illustrations, exercises and the integral topics of variables, built-in classes, objects, conditionals, blocks and much more!

Cool, right? Ready to dive into one of the most influential and demanding third generation programming language? Let's tune in!

Ruby: An Amateur's Pitch

# *Naming things is hard*

Just like programmers are obsessed about formatting, they also care a lot
about how to name the things they create.

# Why to choose better names?
Choosing good names for your variables, methods, and classes, is important because **this makes your code more expressive and easy to read**. In fact, once
you've learned the basic concepts of Ruby, a well-crafted code will read almost
like a prose text to you.  Not necessarily like your favorite novel, but maybe
like a recipe or other instructional prose. Ruby is particularly great for
writing expressive, readable code.

Here are a few examples of great, and rather bad names to pick.

Consider this code:

 


class Email
  def initialize(str, string2, headers_hash)
    # ...
  end

  # more methods ...
end

puts an_email = Email.new("Hi there, Ruby Monstas!", "2015-01-02", { :from => "Ferdous" })

From looking at the first two lines of this code you can figure out that the
author defines an Email class, and it takes 3 arguments, two of which probably
are supposed to be strings, and one is a hash containing some headers.

But what's the purpose of the first two arguments? All we know the author wants them
to be strings. So we might have to consult the documentation, or look at examples
using the class. Luckily we can find an example at the very bottom of the file, and
see that the first argument is supposed to be the subject, while the second one is
a date.

# How about using `type` for naming?
Using the "type" of an object as a variable name, or part of a variable name,
usually is not a very good idea: `string`, `array`, `hash` often are bad names,
except in contexts where the type of the object is all that matters. One example
for such a context is the method definition `def encrypt(string)` in the
<a href="https://www.educative.io/collection/page/5642554087309312/5635220564869120/5723866542374912">Modules</a> chapter.

>In our case it makes sense to name these arguments `subject` and `date` in the
first place, in order to make it easier for others to understand the purpose of
these arguments:

|  <span>🤔</span>   |  When you tell your non-programmer friends that "An email requires two strings and a hash of headers.", they'd probably stare at you weird and switch to another topic.   |
| --- | --- |


  
|<span>✔️</span>| When you instead say "An email requires a subject, a date, and some headers" then they might roughly understand what you're saying.    |
|-| --- |

So let's rename them:





This lesson demonstrates the importance of using the right names for variables, methods, classes, and whatnot! 

Using the Right Words

This lesson demonstrates the importance of using the right names for variables, methods, classes, and whatnot!