Three Ruby Links

A couple of cool links on Ruby since I'm doing my project in it.

First is Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. Alright, so it's the obligatory link, but this is the strangest, funniest, coolest intro to any programming language you're likely to find.

Here's something else I read today - pretty random, really. An argument that Ruby is "a Lisp." That is, that Ruby can double as a functional language (like Scheme or, of course, Common Lisp). More interesting than the post is the discussion in the comments (which I didn't finish). I include this here because my own mind isn't fully made up on this issue - one of the main reasons why I wanted to play with Ruby for this project (and in general). Since the project I'm doing directly relates to how well Ruby can stand in as a functional language, I should know a lot about it in another week! Really - it's something like if my project goes smoothly, then Ruby is "a good Lisp," and if it doesn't, it's not.

Related to the functional languages theme, here's something on monads in Ruby - another good test of just how "functional" Ruby can be.

Unfortunately, I spent all my time today blathering about Canada, so I'm not going to say much about this now. Or really much more this semester, probably. I have stuff to learn about algorithms now too.