Learn the basics of Ruby with hands-on practice.

Become a Ruby Professional

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!
This introductory module 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!

Learn Ruby from Scratch

## Importance of methods

Programming is all about interacting with data. Consider Twitter, for example, which essentially takes 140 characters of text (which is data) from users and displays it to others.


We’ve already learned about the most important primitive (simple) types of data in Ruby: numbers, strings, `true`, `false`, and `nil`. We’ve also looked at the two most common data structures: arrays and hashes.


This all concerns data. Methods, on the other hand, are how we interact with that data.


In this section, we’ll look closer at the anatomy of a method, and we’ll learn how to implement and use our own methods.


## Methods define behavior
Methods are all about defining behavior so that they can easily be applied to different bits of data in different contexts.

For example, there are methods that transform strings, sort arrays, read CSV or Excel files, send emails, sign in to Facebook, or send Tweets.

Another way of putting this is that methods are a way of assigning a name to a certain piece of code. Just like how a variable enables us to look up or refer to an object, methods enable us to execute pieces of code associated with that object.


>**Remember:** Variables name things, methods name behavior (code).



Methods make code reusable by packaging (encapsulating) code and sticking a name on it.


As we’ve seen, Ruby comes with many methods predefined, or written by experienced programmers. So, unless we’re studying computer science and we’re faced with the exercise of implementing our own complicated sorting algorithms for data collections, we’ll simply use the `sort` method for arrays. This method is defined out of the box in Ruby.


Let’s explore what makes up a method, and how we can define our own.




# Importance of methods

Programming is all about interacting with data. Consider Twitter, for example, which essentially takes 140 characters of text (which is data) from users and displays it to others.


We’ve already learned about the most important primitive (simple) types of data in Ruby: numbers, strings, `true`, `false`, and `nil`. We’ve also looked at the two most common data structures: arrays and hashes.


This all concerns data. Methods, on the other hand, are how we interact with that data.


In this section, we’ll look closer at the anatomy of a method, and we’ll learn how to implement and use our own methods.


# Methods define behavior
Methods are all about defining behavior so that they can easily be applied to different bits of data in different contexts.

For example, there are methods that transform strings, sort arrays, read CSV or Excel files, send emails, sign in to Facebook, or send Tweets.

Another way of putting this is that methods are a way of assigning a name to a certain piece of code. Just like how a variable enables us to look up or refer to an object, methods enable us to execute pieces of code associated with that object.


>**Remember:** Variables name things, methods name behavior (code).



Methods make code reusable by packaging (encapsulating) code and sticking a name on it.


As we’ve seen, Ruby comes with many methods predefined, or written by experienced programmers. So, unless we’re studying computer science and we’re faced with the exercise of implementing our own complicated sorting algorithms for data collections, we’ll simply use the `sort` method for arrays. This method is defined out of the box in Ruby.


Let’s explore what makes up a method, and how we can define our own.




The Big Picture

Variables

Built-in Class: Numeric

Built-in Class: String

Built-in Classes: TrueClass, FalseClass and NILClass

Built-in Class: Symbol

Built-in Class: Array

Built-in Class: Hash

Objects

Methods

Operators are Methods

Blocks

Get Ready for some more Drill!

Conditionals

Coding Challenge: Truthiness and Equivalence

Lets run another lap with hashes

Writing Classes

Mini project 1

Spotlight on Things Unremarked

Advanced Topics

Your Toolkit!

Appendix: Mailbox Project Prerequisite

Conclusion

Methods

Importance of methods