On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 7:45 AM, MRH <mauriceroman / gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Group,
>
> I realize this question has been previously asked in different boards,
> however, I believe that it is worth asking here owing to the level of
> expertise present.

That type of thing pops up pretty often on this group.

In engineering, you _need_ to know the fundamentals.  With Ruby, it is
somewhat of a gray area.  With Rails, you risk giving something to
somebody that is powerful with the side effect of gun-in-baby's-hands
syndrome.

Many questions float to this list about Rails where it becomes really
clear to rubyists that the person has no idea about how to use the
underlying language. This is probably common with other DSL's as well.
 And the C guys probably say the same thing about rubyists.

So, where do you start?  I'd say skim through the K&R C book,
read/scan through a couple of design oriented books, and then tackle
Ruby/Python/Perl/whatever with an open mind (meaning, awareness of
different programming paradigms -- hanging out in the book store is
not only pragmatic, but also allows you to ogle your
competition/pretty girls or guys/whatever :)

Programming is not entirely Knuth anymore.  Although, you could learn
a lot from the guy.  On a similar note, a person should avoid trying
to turn Ruby into C or Python like 7stud and some others like to.

Todd