NASCRO

I have dedicated several hours per day this week to learning Ruby using the Pragmatic Programmer’s Programming Ruby as my guide. It’s dense with programming terms right from the start. The authors waste no time at getting to the core of Ruby, which ain’t no walk in the park. It has been a challenge for me to absorb quickly - I am only 67 pages in.

Even so, I am determined to learn this stuff. I have spent several years in the web design/development space and feel limited by what I can do without a real understanding of any programming language. While much of the beginner stuff (like basic types, low-level methods and control structures, etc.) makes sense to me, much more does not. I have spent 30 minutes on one page trying to absorb what’s being said. Hours later, after walking away and thinking about it, the material starts to make sense.

I won’t learn everything I need to know to be a professional programmer when I read the last page of this book. The real learning will come when I start applying the stuff I take away from this book to projects that mean something to me.

Let’s get this “first post” business out of the way.