No not a new girl friend. For most of you non-geeks out there Ruby is a scripting language and I want to use it for managing some of my photos and GPS data. Ruby is relatively new and has many characteristics of the older and more common Python and Perl. I decided to jump in after getting frustrated with AppleScript which I’ve dabbled for years. Matt Newburg’s switching may have finally pushed me into Ruby.
I started with Pine’s book which is a bit basic for me, but it sucked me in. Then onto Pickaxe (nickname for the “standard” reference book for Ruby), but it’s a bit terse for me. so following recommendations on the web, I got Black’s Ruby for Rails. And the recommendations were right. In spite of the Rails’ focus, the level of description is good for a non-computer expert. But it’s also showed me that I bit off quite a bit.
If you’re a fan of Matt’s writing, you might check out his article on replacing AppleScript with appscript and Ruby if you’ve not already seen it:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2007/02/27/replacing-applescript-with-ruby.html
I wrote appscript after also getting honked off with AppleScript, so you’re in good company. 🙂