Dab wrote:

>Thanks for looking!
>
>I'm brand new to programming and had just decided to learn Java as a
>first language, then stumbled accross Ruby, which seems far simpler to
>learn, but doesn't seem to have as many resources/books etc.
>
>I want to eventually write a Windows program for an Apartment
>Management company that will keep track of their buildings
>tenants....all their info, lockers, parking stalls, rental monies
>owing, that sort of thing.
>
>Will Ruby lead me to being able to do that eventually? I don't want,
>nor can afford, to use any programs like Visual Basic that cost wad's
>of money. And, I especially like the Open Source/Free program concepts
>and community atmospheres.
>
>What do you think?
>
>  
>
I think that if you learn Ruby as a first language, learning other
languages after that would feel like having your hands
chopped off.

OTOH I'm not sure Ruby is the way to go if you want to produce
a GUI type application very quickly since AFAIK there's nothing
in Ruby that allows the ease of dragging some controls on a form
and setting their properties - like you could do with VB or Delphi.
VB is a terrible language, Delphi at least has some design to it,
I'm sure there's RAD type development environments for Java
although I haven't used them.

So Java is probably what you need - unless someone on the list
knows of a RAD type environment for building fast GUI apps in Ruby.