RubyGeek

Tonight was fantastic! We had Chris McAvoy, fellow language geek as myself, talk about the favorite parts of his languages. He started by stating the criteria for learning a new language - from what I remember he said he likes good documentation and a good interactive console. Ruby has great both, Python too… Perl is a bit lacking in the console but does have an attempt at it using the perl debugger. Its not bad, but compared to Ruby and Python, its not so fun.

He gave brief overviews of the basic syntax and structure as well as talked about the packaging system. It was interesting, I have dabbled in Python, but have decided to master Ruby first. I do love the cleanness of Python — very refreshing after staring at ugliness of PHP all day. PHP is fine, but after looking at ruby, man… I just can’t help it..
I had to leave just when he started talking about Ruby DSLs, something that has me absolutely fascinated the past few weeks as I try to wrap my tiny brain around the concept and track down tutorials and sample code. I may have to track him down for lunch and fill me in ….
Here are links from his talk:

Notes from Meeting - like me, he also dislikes powerpoint. Nothing wrong with just a list of notes!