Discover Ruby's simplicity and power through hands-on practice. Gain insights into variables, built-in classes, objects, and more, making you productive and happy with programming.

Do you want to learn about interpreted languages? Tired of dense syntaxes? Tired of compiling code to machine language first? Are you looking for an easy-to-use scripting language? Well, Ruby is the answer!

Ruby is a smart, easy-to-use, functional, object-oriented programming language, a wondrous mix of Perl's scripting power, Pythonic capabilities, and more! As Matsumoto, creator of Ruby, implies: "I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language."

This introductory course provides hands-on practice with the support of interactive illustrations, exercises, and the integral topics of variables, built-in classes, objects, conditionals, blocks, and more!

Ready to dive into one of the most influential and demanding third-generation programming languages? Let's get started!

Learn Ruby from Scratch

`[“John”, “boy”, “running”, “along”]`

`["John", "a", "boy", "running", "along"]`

What’s the output of the following code snippet?

```ruby
text = "John is a quick boy running along the field."

p text.scan(/\b[ABJRabjr][a-z]+\b/)
```

What’s the output of the following code snippet?
<pre><code class="language-ruby">text = &quot;John is a quick boy running along the field.&quot;

p text.scan(/\b[ABJRabjr][a-z]+\b/)
</code></pre>

What’s the output of the following code snippet?

```ruby
text="She wants to shear a sheep"

p text.scan(/she../)
```

What’s the output of the following code snippet?
<pre><code class="language-ruby">text=&quot;She wants to shear a sheep&quot;

p text.scan(/she../)
</code></pre>

Which instance method is/are defined as private?

```ruby
class Test
  def foo
    puts "Private method called"
  end
  private
  def bar
  end
  def foobar
  end
end
test1 = Test.new
puts test1.foo
```

Which instance method is/are defined as private?
<pre><code class="language-ruby">class Test
 def foo
 puts &quot;Private method called&quot;
 end
 private
 def bar
 end
 def foobar
 end
end
test1 = Test.new
puts test1.foo
</code></pre>

What’s the output of the following code snippet?

```ruby
text="A sheepdog is rounding the sheep"

p text.scan(/sheep/)
```

What’s the output of the following code snippet?
<pre><code class="language-ruby">text=&quot;A sheepdog is rounding the sheep&quot;

p text.scan(/sheep/)
</code></pre>

What’s the output of the following code?

```ruby
names = "John, Smith, Lara, Ali"
matches = names.match(/smith/)
p matches
```

What’s the output of the following code?
<pre><code class="language-ruby">names = &quot;John, Smith, Lara, Ali&quot;
matches = names.match(/smith/)
p matches
</code></pre>

Take a quiz on some concepts in this chapter.

The Big Picture

Variables

Built-in Class: Numeric

Built-in Class: String

Built-in Classes: TrueClass, FalseClass, and NilClass

Built-in Class: Symbol

Built-in Class: Array

Built-in Class: Hash

Objects

Methods

Operators are Methods

Blocks

Get Ready for Some More Drill!

Conditionals

Coding Challenge: Truthiness and Equivalence

Lets Run Another Lap with Hashes

Writing Classes

The Mailbox Project

Spotlight on Things Unremarked

Advanced Topics

Your Toolkit

Appendix: Mailbox Project Prerequisite

Quiz on Advanced Topics