# Ruby after the tutorial **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [8 January 2006 02:25 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-after-the-tutorial/23928 "2006-01-08T02:25:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Daren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Daren](https://rubytalk.org/u/Daren)\ **Post date:** [8 January 2006 02:25 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-after-the-tutorial/23928/1 "2006-01-08T02:25:11Z")
I am a PHP developer and have just begun to investigate Ruby. I have looked through the online Pickaxe book and Why's Poignant guide, but I'm anxious to get started programming with it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty short on ideas on what to program that would increase my understanding and proficiency with Ruby. What would you experts out there suggest for a Ruby newcomer who has seen all the tutorials but wants to continue learning? Is there something specific that you always code after learning a language? Any ideas or resources would be appreciated? P.S. Replies like "Practice,Practice,Practice" would not answer my question. Please be specific. > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Guindon1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@Bill\_Guindon1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Bill_Guindon1)\ **Post date:** [8 January 2006 02:35 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-after-the-tutorial/23928/2 "2006-01-08T02:35:15Z")
> I am a PHP developer and have just begun to investigate Ruby. I have > looked through the online Pickaxe book and Why's Poignant guide, but I'm > anxious to get started programming with it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty > short on ideas on what to program that would increase my understanding > and proficiency with Ruby. What would you experts out there suggest for > a Ruby newcomer who has seen all the tutorials but wants to continue > learning? Is there something specific that you always code after > learning a language? Any ideas or resources would be appreciated? This is probably a good place to start for ideas: [http://www.rubyquiz.com/](http://www.rubyquiz.com/) Poke through the archives, when you find one that interests you, give it a shot. You could also try to rewrite something small you've done in another language or try to start with a tool that you would like to have (file parser, website grabber, html cleaner, simple rss reader, etc). Whatever you try, it has to interest you, or you'll lose interest in it (and maybe Ruby). Happy Rubying 馃檪 > **路路路** > > On 1/7/06, Daren \ wrote: > > > P.S. Replies like "Practice,Practice,Practice" would not answer my > > question. Please be specific. > > > > -- > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). > > -- > Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla) > The best answer to most questions is "it depends". ---
**Author:** ![Gregory\_Seidman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Gregory\_Seidman](https://rubytalk.org/u/Gregory_Seidman)\ **Post date:** [8 January 2006 04:18 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-after-the-tutorial/23928/3 "2006-01-08T04:18:39Z")
} I am a PHP developer and have just begun to investigate Ruby. I have } looked through the online Pickaxe book and Why's Poignant guide, but I'm } anxious to get started programming with it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty } short on ideas on what to program that would increase my understanding } and proficiency with Ruby. What would you experts out there suggest for } a Ruby newcomer who has seen all the tutorials but wants to continue } learning? Is there something specific that you always code after } learning a language? Any ideas or resources would be appreciated? The best I can do is tell you what I did to learn, just a couple of weeks ago. I bought the pickaxe book but, honestly, only got through the first chapter or so. I learned that Ruby is the bastard child of Perl and Smalltalk, which made me happy. I also got through a chunk of Why's guide, even before the pickaxe book arrived, which got me excited about some of the features (mostly iteration, blocks, and binding). I then did nothing for a couple of months. Meanwhile, I have been keeping some sets of bookmarks as RDF files. I "subscribe" to them as Firefox live bookmarks and they are available to me wherever I go. I was maintaining them by keeping them in simple list files and running an awk script I had written to produce the RDF files. I told some people about it, and about three weeks ago one of them tells me that he wrote a PHP webapp to manage such things, and would I like to take a look. Well, I took a look and it was pretty neat, so I decided to implement it with Ruby on Rails as a toy project. Mine turned out better than his, though this was largely due to JavaScript coolness rather than any inherent advantage of Ruby/RoR over PHP for such a small project. This involved the following: 1) Getting Ruby installed: apt-get install ruby ri 2) Getting RubyGems installed in /usr/local, which is nontrivial anywhere.    I wound up writing a workaround script to force it to install properly    in /usr/local, then had to add GEM\_HOME to /etc/profile and    /etc/csh.cshrc (and the rails environment file later on). 3) Getting rails installed: gem install -y rails 4) Figuring out how to use rails from docs/tutorials and playing around 5) Figuring out how to use RSS::Maker to generate RSS feeds 6) Implementing and debugging the RoR app. 7) Figuring out how to integrate with Apache2 (which involved fcgid) once I    had finished development, and as a path on my only virtual host rather    than as its own virtual host. } P.S. Replies like "Practice,Practice,Practice" would not answer my } question. Please be specific. I hope that was specific enough. It taught me a great deal, and I now feel pretty confident using Ruby and RoR. I've been doing the Ruby Quizzes the last two weeks, too. Last week's was tough, and I never did perfect my solution. This week, however, the problem was easier and I produced two solid solutions in about three and a half hours. I like Ruby. --Greg P.S. Lurking on the list and reading the responses/solutions to other      people's problems has also been very helpful. > **路路路** > > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:25:11AM +0900, Daren wrote: