Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PHP, javascript, C, C#, C++. It’s not French, but it might as well be.

I’ve tried to pick up programming languages before and it’s been a lot like dipping my toes in hot lava. Painful doesn’t describe the torture of reading “Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby”. How in the world am I going to create an app for Shopify.

Straddling the fine line between  insanity, stupidity or genius I decide to take the plunge and learn what this means:

  def amazon_return_all_per_speed
total_array = [] user_defined_shipping_speeds
@speeds.each do |type|
@shipping_node = @full_nodeset.xpath(“//member[ShippingSpeedCategory=’#{type}’]”)
shopify_response_hash = {service_name:  “#{type} Shipping”,
service_code:         “f#{rand(1…20)}”,
total_price:          “#{adjusted_fees_per_method(type)}”,
currency:             “#{currency_code}”,
min_delivery_date:    “#{min_delivery_date}”,
max_delivery_date:    “#{max_delivery_date}”}
total_array << shopify_response_hash
end
return {rates: total_array}
end

This, my friends, is Ruby. Not the semi-precious gem stone, but a coding language that I come to find out is what Shopify was created with. Same with Twitter and Airbnb.

So I thought if it was good enough for them its gotta be good enough for me. Yes! I have my language. Now what?

How am I going to learn this thing, and where am I going to type this mess? I need a book or video or something a kind soul has put together to explain to a thick-headed Lithuanian like myself how to understand this language that looks a lot like hieroglyphics to me.

After many stops and starts I find my savior, in the form of a book, and lucky for me it’s free. From the title of the book I’m hoping the author has a sense of humor, its “Learn Ruby the Hard Way“.

This process is going to be hard enough that I need a smile on my face while the tears escape from my eyes. I open the book and in a couple paragraphs I start to smile and even chuckle ever so slightly.

Ok, this isn’t going to be too awfully bad. I might even like it a little, we’ll have to see.