[ale] semi [OT] making learning ruby programming fun?

Tue Mar 26 21:17:37 EDT 2013

Hi Ed, and all,

Thanks for the note.  Several people have mentioned the make up a project concept.  I think, after I plod through a textbook, I'll try to build something for myself, like a podcatcher or something.

Those look like cool links, although I don't know when I'll get a chance to study the subject much.  So much to learn.

Here's some info I thought I'd pass along to everyone.  I was in Barnes and Noble for a while today looking at Ruby books.  I found a couple of books I liked, but I didn't want to pay their huge markup compared to Amazon.  I asked if they would match the online price, and I found out they would.  There is a small catch.  You cannot buy the books from the store and take them home.  But, you can go over to the customer service desk and order the books from the Barnes and Noble online division.  Their prices were the same as Amazon, and there is no shipping charge if the order is over $ 25, just like Amazon.  Since they were nice enough to provide the store and the stock for me to look at and a nice place to sit, I did things this way.  I have no idea how this works out on their corporate bottom line, but, this way, I was able to give them the business and still get my discount.  I probably saved $30 over the price I would have paid getting them in the store.  Using this method, you don't get an additional 10% member discount if you're a BN member, since you're already getting a very substantial discount by getting the online price.

You guys might be interested in the titles too:

I got Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional, published by Apress, $ 21.81

This is a bit dated with a 2009 copyright, but it does include Ruby 1.9, which was the most recent version until about a month ago.

I also got A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, published by Prentice Hall, $ 27.26

This has a 53 page section on Vim, which is what I wanted, but I'm sure there are many other useful tidbits too.

Sincerely,

Ron

Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net> wrote:

>I've noticed that tech books are not fun unless I have something
>specific I
>need to do.
>
>So to have fun reading about how to use ruby, you need a reason to use
>ruby.
>
>The nice thing about ruby is that it is pretty good for most high-level
>software tasks.  You would be hard pressed to write a device driver for
>the
>Linux kernel in ruby, but most of the time people aren't writing kernel
>stuff, so ruby's great.  You just need to find some problem you have
>that
>software can solve.
>
>With that specific problem in hand, you'll be motivated to retain the
>stuff
>you learn about ruby.
>
>At least that's how my own brain works: I need some specific project to
>hook my new knowledge onto.
>
>Oh---About garbage collection---That's really a cultural thing.  There
>is
>nothing technical preventing a C programmer from using the good old
>Boehm
>garbage collection library or any other great garbage collection
>technologies.  It's just that if you get hired by a team of C
>programmers,
>they have probably already settled on an anti-garbage-collection bias.
>
>  http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/
>
>Personally, I'm liking garbage collection lately, even though I'm
>pretty
>good at getting by without it.
>
>I was listening to a series of lectures by Richard Hamming lately.  He
>pointed out that human beings aren't very good at repetitive tasks, and
>you're better off writing software to take care of tedium instead of
>doing
>it manually.  I think I've seen enough memory-allocation-and-freeing
>bugs
>to convince me that humans are not very good at programming garbage
>collection manually, so I think it's OK for software to do it.
>
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e5_Z6oZ0rM
>
>One observation is that even in a context like Go, where you have
>garbage
>collection in the runtime, you can avoid GC by simply maintaining free
>lists and stuff.  That is, you still have a choice when the programming
>environment provides GC to optimize away from it, assuming you find
>some
>good reason not to let it do its thing.
>
>They figured out how to make garbage collection take work pretty
>efficiently, though, in the late 70s and early 1980's, though.  Because
>it's a cultural thing, I doubt it's possible to do a real experiment:
>People who dislike software-automated garbage collection won't want to
>use
>it, and people who like it will not be interested in doing it manually.
>
>  Baker 1978: List Processing in Real Time on a Serial Computer
>  http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=359470
>
>Lieberman 1983: A Real-Time Garbage Collector Based on the Lifetimes of
>Objects
>  http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358147
>
>(If anybody knows other seminal papers on high-performance garbage
>collection, please share.  It turns out it's relevant to stuff like
>distributed file systems.)
>
>
>
>On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
>atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> As some of you know who've been following my prior threads, I've had
>a
>> long time interest in learning a modern programming language.  I've
>had
>> difficulty putting the proper time into the studies, but I'm always
>> genuinely interested in the information I learn here.  Leam had
>convinced
>> me that GO was a great language, and I believe it is.  I was going to
>> tackle that, but I have misgivings about its lack of popularity in
>the
>> market place.
>>
>> According to:
>>
>> http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
>>
>> GO ranks between 51 and 100 in usage, and the percentage is so low
>it's
>> not listed.  So, like it or not, learning GO might be a skill few
>people
>> want.  I decided to defer that.
>>
>> Most recently, I decided to learn the specific language of the
>MetaTrader
>> currency trading platform so I can build a tradebot.  I am working on
>that
>> slowly.  Unless I get really good, it is unlikely someone will hire
>me for
>> that.  The objective would be for the tradebot to make money using my
>own
>> account.
>>
>> So, I still have an interest in learning a general programming
>language.
>>
>> I'm interested in a modern garbage collected language, preferably
>multi
>> paradigm, with safe I/O and system calls, that can be compiled, and
>that
>> doesn't care about white space.
>>
>> See this comparison:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages
>>
>> I've chosen Ruby as my project language.
>>
>> According to the link posted above, the top 10 languages, and some of
>the
>> reasons I've rejected some of them, are as follows.  No offense is
>intended
>> to anyone that programs in these languages.
>>
>> 01) Java - security problems
>>
>> 02) C - not modern garbage collected
>>
>> 03) Objective C - Apple centric primarily
>>
>> 04) C++ - not modern garbage collected
>>
>> 05) C# - MS centric primarily
>>
>> ------------
>>
>> 06) PHP - security problems
>> per
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Php
>> "About 30% of all vulnerabilities listed on the National
>Vulnerability
>> Database are linked to PHP."
>>
>> 07) VB - MS centric
>>
>> 08) Python - cares about white space
>>
>> 09) Ruby - This is my choice.
>>
>> 10) Perl - does not have safe I/O and system calls
>> per
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages
>>
>> -------------
>>
>> So, having said all that, I have some Ruby questions.
>>
>> A) I have the "PickAxe" book on Ruby 1.9 by Dave Thomas.  Is that a
>good
>> resource for learning, or do I need to upgrade to a Ruby 2.0 book now
>that
>> version 2 is out?
>>
>> B) Does anyone have any experience compiling Ruby either through
>Rubinius
>> or JRuby or otherwise?
>>
>> See
>http://patshaughnessy.net/2012/2/15/is-ruby-interpreted-or-compiled
>>
>> Finally, I've observed that reading one of these programming books is
>> about as much fun as reading the US tax code.  You get a thousand
>little
>> examples of things like using for next loops to do a factorial.  Now
>that's
>> exciting.  I've seen maybe 1 of 100 books, primarily from Deitel and
>Deitel
>> or the Head First series, that make learning programming fun.  They
>present
>> you with real world applications, simplified, that are interesting. 
>They
>> let you get something you can interact with on the screen quickly and
>work
>> on learning how it works and tweaking it.  For example, a simulator
>of an
>> ATM machine.  An actual working realistic program.
>>
>> C) So, does ANYONE know of a Ruby book that would make learning the
>> language FUN, or at least moderately interesting?
>>
>> As always, any help is appreciated.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9
>Mail.
>> Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want
>to
>> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate
>energy
>> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very
>> quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
>> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
>  http://noserose.net/e/
>  http://www.coraid.com/
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ale mailing list
>Ale at ale.org
>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo

--

Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com