Newbie to Ruby?

The latest, greatest thing which has come into vogue and has everyone buzzing (well the buzz has been growing steadily for a few years now), is Ruby . On or off Rails , the word is out and its pioneers are raving that it’s the next best thing since sliced bread….or Java. Well, I love rubies; that is the “I was born in July and it’s my birthstone ruby.â€� I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the other Ruby, but seeing that July (and my birthday!) are approaching I was curious enough to see what this proclaimed “gemâ€� is all about. Ruby, created by Yukihiro “Matzâ€� Matsumoto can best be described as a pure object-oriented programming language with a super elegant syntax that makes programming fun. Fun and elegant? Hence the name choice? Actually, Matz wanted to use a jewel name for his new Perl-inspired language so he named Ruby after a colleague’s birthstone…before even realizing that a pearl (June) precedes a ruby (July&...