Hello friends, the title is mostly self explanatory. I would like to start programming but I also feel like I am not very smart, so I would like a programming language that is easier to grasp than others. That considered I don’t hope to be able to learn something “powerful” but it would be nice to still be able to do some useful things. Something I would love to do is make games, I know those are usually made in C, which is a very difficult one, but maybe some simpler games can be made with other languages.
Thanks, ruby was another language I saw in the thread popping a few times, the first one being python. I I was told a few things python can be good for, can you give me a few examples of good uses for ruby just to have a vague idea?
Ruby and Python are applicable in most of the same areas. I’m currently working on a realy simple Ruby project and using a web framework called Sinatra (kinda like a lightweight Ruby on Rails if you’ve heard of that) that makes it super easy to build web apps and APIs. My ruby app basically queries an API, sorts some data and presents it to my companies management as they need it.
Python is great too and more popular, thought I’m not really a fan as I don’t like when languages enforce white space. Python also tends to have an “attitude” like there is only one way to do a task, whereas Ruby is more flexible in this respect. Also, Ruby is fundamentally “object oriented” , Python has some object orientation but it was added on as an afterthought so Python can be a bit mixed depending on which libraries you choose to use.
If you don’t know what object orientation is, it means “everything is an object”. In functional languages you’d count the letters, in Ruby you ask the object for it’s length property.
This is Ruby, using the IRB command line interpreter (shell)
irb(main):001:0> word = ‘bicycle’ => “bicycle” irb(main):002:0> puts word.length 7 => nil irb(main):003:0>
Ruby has carved space for itself in web application development, but has limited popularity in in other domains. In comparison with Python, Ruby has fewer “old warts” and feels more internally consistent. In a similar manner, the community is more cohesive and is notably newcomer-friendly (newcomer experience is a higher priority and suggestions/help you get will be more consistent), compared to Python.