As I’ve stayed mostly out of the web programming revolution, I’ve lagged behind some of the good technologies we have now, and have mostly been occupied with Python, and the application side of programming.

One of the biggest trends currently is Ruby, which—while not being a web language exclusively—was made tremendously popular by the strong community around it and the gazillion different web frameworks and other cool things built on top of it.

I have long been wanting to give it a shot, and am finding it to be a thrill to play around with, although I have to admit it being much more challenging than Python for me. I think this is mostly because of the bigger emphasis on functional programming, which I never used to its full potential with Python, or any other language.

Aside the requisite reading of why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby, keeping The Ruby Programming Language as a reference, and plenty of online tutorials, I have recently discovered a great set of tools for the aspiring Rubyist: Ruby Koans.

After setting the appropriate environment, the tools guide you in a TDD-fashion through most of what Ruby has to offer, and the amazing thing is that you learn by doing, not by reading. The code is beautifully written, and it is really the best resource for learning Ruby that I’ve yet encountered. Best of all, you get that immediate satisfaction every TDD developer craves for after making a change and seeing a test pass successfully, yet none of the “difficulties” with writing the tests. It’s like a mini cocaine hit, after which you keep wanting to go fix the next test. I’m lovin’ it! *snort*

Thanks to Evan Light for pointing it out in his recent post.