Start clean

I created an alias irb=irb --sample-book-mode

This removes the complex prompt like irb(main):001:0> and gives plain and simple >> instead.

Get Help!

When programming in Python, even today I use dir in Python REPL. So I was looking for the equivalent in Ruby land.

Turns out I was comparing apples and oranges (so to speak)

As of early 2022, irb has awesome help built-in. It has good autocompletion. So just typing . may be enough to know list of methods available.

I have owned this domain for a couple of years now (maybe more) But it never occurred to me to have my email address on that domain. I suppose I always assumed that it would involve setting up own servers and/or cost of server etc.

Usually domain registrars provide some free emails, but their interface is just usable. Also, it might become one-more-email I’ll forget to check 😆

But for my recent secret 🕵 project, I needed a professional email. Not personal email.

I’m really digging reading web posts in the terminal.

After using it for some time, I realized that typing same arguments after the URL (That I usually copied to the clipboard from some other place) is getting cumbersome.

So I created a fish function out of it (If you see yourself doing the same task over and over, it is a good place to automated it)

Here is the simple function

I could not believe myself, that I finally created an IRC account.

Lot of people have asked how come I am not on IRC. They told me that we get to interact with smart people on IRC, including creators of great software, libraries, framework. But for some reason, I resisted. It felt complex, compared to modern communities like Telegram, Discord etc.

Today someone suggested it again on the Doom Emacs Telegram channel, and this time I decided to give an honest try.

While I noted similarities and difference between Ruby and Python, as I was learning the basics here, here and here there is official document on the Ruby site. See this

Methods

• Ruby functions start with def just like python, but end with end keyword.
• splat operator (*) to destructure an array into a List. This is similar to Python splat operator

>>> x = [10, 20, 30]
>>> a, *b = x
>>> print(f'{a=}, {b=}')
a=10, b=[20, 30]

Python ☝️, Ruby 👇

>> first, *rest, last  = ["a", "b", "c", "d"]
=> ["a", "b", "c", "d"]
>> first
=> "a"
>> rest
=> ["b", "c"]
>> last
=> "d"
>>

But in Ruby, splat operator can also create an array.

>> q=*135
=> [135]
>> q
=> [135]

In the second scenario¹, it creates an array. I think this is useful for scenario where the method accepts either a single element or an array.

Would you like to see pretty icons in your terminal for directory list ?

Then install lsd from here

Check this pretty screenshot of lsd --tree

In case you are wondering, I’m using nord theme with Alacritty

Learning continues …

• idiomatic(?) ruby loops use each like :

(1..5).each do |counter|
  puts "iteration #{counter}"
end

Although python like loop also work

for counter in 1..5
  puts "iteration #{counter}"
end

• array.each_with_index is like python’s enumerate

• Ruby seems to have multiple ways to do the same thing, as opposed to Python’s

There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.

e.g. a.map do .. end, a.map { |el| e.something } and a.map(&:method)

There are multiple ways to install ruby on your machine.

Official recommendation is to use your OS’s package manager like apt, pacman or brew

If you are using a version manager, rvm (Ruby Version Manager) seems to be popular. But in the past, I started using asdf, so I’ve decided to stick with it. It is also mentioned (first in the list) on the official Installing Ruby page 😄

asdf plugin add ruby https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-ruby.git
asdf list all ruby
asdf install ruby latest

At the time of this writing 3.1.0 is the latest

I’ve meaning to learn Ruby for some time now.

Especially, when I dabbled from time to time in Elixir, I felt that knowing Ruby may be an advantage (since Elixir syntax similar to Ruby)

No one learns (I think) Ruby just for the language. They learn it so that they can use Ruby on Rails (RoR as popularly known) RoR, in case you don’t know, is the Web framework. Like Django in Python land. But there are a lot of web frameworks like Flask, Pyramid, FastAPI to name some.