ACM ruby learning path by David A. Black

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) offers its members many educational opportunities. There are books from Books 24x7, online courses from ElementK and videos from Safari. Educational materials are provided in a variety of formats. A new addition to the ACM learning collection is called learning paths. Currently there are learning paths for Ruby and Python. Since I have a curiosity about the Ruby programming language I decided to take the Ruby learning path. I gained valuable insight into the Ruby programming language by investing a small amount of time with this learning path. Before I began, I wondered how the material offered in a learning path compared with textbooks and courses on the same subject already provided by the ACM. Does a learning path build knowledge incrementally? Does a learning path offer more information than a textbook or a course? Is there a special achievement at the end of a learning path? These were some of the questions I had when I started the Ruby learning path. I began the Ruby learning path with the introductory page. Here I found a table of contents outlining the information offered by this learning path. From the brief descriptions in the table of contents I can see the journey begins with an overview of the language, progresses through code examples and diagrams and ends in a discussion of C and Java integrations. This outline provides me the information I expect from a learning path; a progression of basic to advanced information on the Ruby programming language. The first piece of information I read and recommend as a starting point is the PDF document titled " Short Essays on Ruby ". This document provides an overview of the culture and history of Ruby. Before learning a new language I find it helpful to learn who created it and why. The answer to these questions gives insight into whether a language meets my needs and interest. After reading the background information I moved on to the " Introducing Ruby " link found in the table of contents. The " Introducing Ruby " PDF link is a series of slides on the Ruby language. The slides are very succinct, as would be expected during a presentation, and are not as effective when taken out of context. I found the slides to be excellent resource material, but hard to follow as independent units of information. I …