Attempting to learn Ruby

Greetings!

I want to learn Ruby to make my own extensions, but I don’t even know where to start. Does anyone know of any good resources as a starting point for a Ruby Programming Newbie? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
~Drew

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I don’t know if you have any other programming experience, but I usually point people to the getting started tutorials on the official Ruby site: Ruby Programming Language

http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/

Then - for SketchUp Ruby extensions I recommend first time developers having a look at some articles I’ve written on best practices to avoid clashing with other extensions:

One to perhaps have read and keep in mind when starting your extensions is the Golden Rules article: Golden Rules of SketchUp Plugin Development | Procrastinators Revolt!
Having that in the back of your head might save you some rewrites.

We also have the Publishing Guidelines for the Extensions Warehouse:
http://extensions.sketchup.com/developer

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@tt_su

I have minor programming experience with SQL, and if you count hand coding HTML, HTML5, CSS3, PHP and JavaScript, I have a bit.

Thanks for the direction! I will definitely check it out, and hopefully not have the frustration levels that web coding caused me when I first started.

~Drew

SketchUp Ruby API Developer Docs

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I do count that :slight_smile: (That smiley is smiling way too much for a normal :)…)
I mainly had HTML,CSS,JS,PHP and MySQL experience when I started writing SketchUp Ruby Extensions. The Web-background is in fact a great help if you need to make UI using WebDialogs.

Now, I’m gonna give you one month then I’ll take you down the C++ route" :wink:

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I’ve been dreading C++, but I have known I would have to learn it eventually.

I will do my level best! It looks like I have a lot of reading and a long path of late nights and colorful language ahead of me. It will be an adventure! :smile:

~Drew

The nice thing about Ruby is that it’s similar to SketchUp is a easy learning curve. If you have an extension idea then that is often the best way to get started as it drives to toward a goal of producing a product, not just leaning a language.

Do ask in the forums if you have any questions should you ever feel stomped. :slight_smile: (…seriously, that smiley looks like it’s sarcastic laughing… …I want to file bug report regarding its cheerfulness… just a regular smile please.)

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Oh, rest assured, I will be bugging you Wiley Coyote Super Geniuses when I get stuck (which will likely be often). :smile:

Well, I learned ruby for SketchUp using this book:
http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/pdf/Automatic_SketchUp.pdf

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