Intro to Ruby

The slides for this course can be viewed here

This is an Intro to Ruby course. All material by Cheri Allen and Heather Moore. Thanks to Chris Pine and Sandi Metz for inspirational books.

The course is meant to be taught in 5 two-hour sections. Each of the slides and practice files are customizable according to the needs of a given class or audience.

Course description

Ready to start programming? Want to learn one language that you can use to build web apps and iPhone apps, do system administration, and security? Then you're ready to learn Ruby.

Ruby is an open source language that powers applications and products like Hulu, LivingSocial, Groupon, and Github. There is a thriving, friendly community of users, and the job market for developers is strong.

Through this five course series, you'll get a throrough introduction to programming fundamentals with Ruby. We'll use the Interactive RuBy shell; write command line programs that use loops, conditionals, methods, and classes; and learn the basics of object oriented programming. We'll mix lecture and practice, and help guide you through the coursework.

We'll spend part of the first class meeting setting up your development environment, so there's no need to install software ahead of time. Just bring your laptop and be prepared to start coding!

Cost:

Dates:

Location:

A limited number of scholarships are available for those with a financial hardship. To apply, contact us at...

Prerequisites:

You should have:

An interest in programming and be comfortable using a computer.

Tech requirements:

• Your laptop (Mac, PC, or Linux are all okay).
• A text editor. We recommend Sublime Text 2 (free; available for Mac, PC, and Linux).

Topics covered:

• Class 0 - Installfest & Intro to Command Line

  Get your developement environment set up on your machine. Install Ruby, Rails, and Git, with the assistance of some helpful volunteers. We'll also have a brief lecture on working with the command line.

• Class 1 - Intro to programming in Ruby

  What is programming? What is Ruby? We'll give you some context for the class, then dive right into writing code. Using the Interactive Ruby Shell, we'll begin experimenting with variables, methods, and data types. We'll end the class by writing a little interactive command line program.

• Class 2 - Structured programming (loops and conditions), working with collections data types

  We'll create small programs in the text editor that use conditionals and loops for control flow. Then, we'll explore Ruby's collections data types, and see some of the ways we can work with them.

• Class 3 - Object Oriented Programming, part I

  We'll discuss the basic concepts of object oriented programming. We'll write our own methods, and explore some of the predefined methods that are available in Ruby for certain classes of object.

• Class 4 - Object Oriented Programming, part II

  We will expand our knowledge of OOP by discussing classes and inheritance. We will tie together everything we've learned with a relatively complex, totally fun final project.