Recently I started learning [Ruby](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) and I have to say: I can easily see it becoming my favourite language :-). Firstly, I would like to thank [Keith Rowell](http://blog.keithrowell.com) for getting me to give Ruby a go and for helping me unlearn some tendencies learnt from other languages (ocassionally referred to as PHPisms and Pythonisms :-P). Ruby is full of what many describe as 'syntactic sugar' and makes writing in the language a dream. For example, every number is an object and has methods: # Will print out the word "hello" five times 5.times { puts "hello" } Arrays (as with pretty much everything in Ruby) are also objects and have their own methods: # Will print out the numbers one to five [1,2,3,4,5].each { |n| puts n } Ruby also comes with an interactive Ruby shell that you can test things out in. Just open a command prompt and enter 'irb'. You can then try out the two examples above and see what they do for yourself. To learn more about Ruby stay tuned because I have a feeling that you will be hearing (or reading as the case clearly is) a lot more about Ruby from me. Until next time, you can read up on Ruby at [ruby-lang.org](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) and [ruby-doc.org](http://www.ruby-doc.org/). 2009-06-03T23:40:18+10:00 39 true 2008-07-17T20:10:00+10:00 2009-06-03T23:40:18+10:00 ruby-my-new-friend