The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Second Edition

1.1. Basic Ruby language literacy

The goal of this section is to get you going with Ruby. It takes a breadth-first approach: we’ll walk through the whole cycle of learning some syntax, writing some code, and running some programs.

At this point, you need to have Ruby installed on your computer.^[1] The examples in this book use Ruby 2.1.0. You also need a text editor (you can use any editor you like, as long as it’s a plain-text editor and not a word processor) and a directory (a.k.a. a folder) in which to store your Ruby program files. You might name that directory rubycode or rubysamples—any name is fine, as long as it’s separate from other work areas so that you can keep track of your practice program files.

¹ You can find full up-to-date ...