Phoenix Ruby Users Group
I started attending the local Ruby group meetings a couple months ago, feeling I needed to engage with others of like mind. Nice to see a decent sized group of regulars attending, including James Britt who runs the Ruby-Doc.org site.
I began my Ruby Conversion back last September out of a feeling of intellectual stagnation. I hate working so hard to get things done, and Java, even though I’ve become quite proficient in applying it to problems presented in my day job, was starting to feel “old” and “heavy”. Kept hearing all the Ruby and Ruby on Rails buzz so I decided to check it out. Started working my way through half a dozen books but I just couldn’t seem to find time to apply any of it to anything real, … until I started attending the Ruby group meetings and was around some folks who were deep into it. Since then I’ve made the switch to writing Ruby scripts whenever I can — I do a lot of “moving data around” — and have begun converting some previous little Java apps into Ruby, mostly as exercises to pull me deeper into the Ruby libraries. So far, so good. I’m still a noob, but feeling more comfortable daily. And a Smalltalk background helps tremendously.
