Learning Ruby

I just started learning the scripting language Ruby. I've started reading the book Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book by Jeremy McAnally. You can download the pdf version of the book at InfoQ.com to try before you buy.

As it turns out, I've already got Ruby installed on my iBook G4 since I'm running OS X 10.4. If you are on Windows or some other machine that does not have Ruby already installed, you can get it at http://www.ruby-lang.org, where they also have plenty of instructional information.

So far, I've only read the first chapter and have done the requisite "Hello, World!" program:

puts "Hello, World!"

Pretty simple, huh? Sure beats the pants off of Java for doing simple IO. As a software tester by profession, I think Ruby will be handy in my toolbag. And since it has gotten quite popular, I might as well try it as an alternative to Perl for my scripting and testing needs.