Updated Articles and Resources

By Michael Morin, About.com Guide

Setting up a Rails Development Environment Created: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Before you can dive into Rails development, you need a few things. Things like a competent editor, a web browser with a dom inspector, and the git version control utility. Get these things out of t...
What is Ruby on Rails? Created: Thursday, May 17, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 17, 2012
Ruby on Rails is most likely the only reason most people have heard of Ruby. It is Ruby's
Worked Example: Tabular Data Created: Thursday, May 10, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 10, 2012
Much is made of the two base data structures in Ruby: the Array and the Hash. However, it's also quite easy to use two dimensional arrays in Ruby.
Worked Example: Number Guessing Game Created: Monday, April 30, 2012 Updated: Monday, April 30, 2012
A number guessing game is written, and each of its features explored.
Weak References Created: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, April 24, 2012
In order to observe an object in Ruby, you normally need to keep a reference to that object. Since keeping a reference to the object keeps it in memory, it cannot be deallocated. Using weak referen...
What is Ruby? Created: Friday, April 20, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 20, 2012
New to Ruby? Or even to programming? Find out what Ruby really is (and isn't) and why you should (and shouldn't) use it.
Introducing Classes Created: Friday, December 02, 2011 Updated: Friday, April 20, 2012
Ruby is an object oriented programming language. This means code is organized into classes, and data is manipulated via objects. Since this is so essential to Ruby, it's very easy to do.
SQL Injection Created: Thursday, December 11, 2008 Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012
SQL injection is a vulnerability that tricks a web application into executing arbitrary SQL queries.
Symbols Created: Saturday, January 07, 2012 Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012
Symbols are everywhere in Ruby code but, having no analog in other programming languages, they're often misunderstood.
Serialization in Ruby: Marshal Created: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012
Serializing an object is to convert an object to a byte stream and either store that object for future loading, or sending to another program to be loaded there. There are several common ways to se...
Getting Information About a File in Ruby Using File::Stat Created: Thursday, April 12, 2012 Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012
Sometimes blindly opening files just won't cut it, sometimes you need to know more information about a file before opening it.
References to Methods in Ruby Created: Thursday, March 29, 2012 Updated: Thursday, March 29, 2012
While it may not make sense to do so at first, it is possible to take a reference to a method in Ruby.
Generating Random Numbers in Ruby Created: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, March 27, 2012
It's often useful in games, simulation and unit testing to generate random numbers, Ruby provides easy access to a pseudo-random number generator.
Cryptographic Hashes in Ruby Created: Friday, March 23, 2012 Updated: Friday, March 23, 2012
Generating cryptographic hashes in Ruby is quite easy. Ruby provides both a built in method and gives access to OpenSSL's hashing algorithms in most installations.
Password Security Primer Created: Sunday, March 11, 2012 Updated: Sunday, March 11, 2012
Anyone writing a web application or any web site requiring authentication needs to understand certain things about password security. If you fail to understand these things and plan for them, it's ..
Base64 in Ruby Created: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 Updated: Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Base64 is a way to represent any data as ASCII data. Ruby provides a few handy functions to encode and decode Base64.
Installing RVM on Linux Created: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 Updated: Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Installing the Ruby Version Manager (RVM) on Linux
Calculating Abbreviations Created: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 Updated: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Abbreviations are used commonly in command-line programs, REPLs and with autocomplete features. Ruby provides a way to generate them automatically as part of its standard library.
Interfacing with the Arduino on Linux Created: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 Updated: Tuesday, February 28, 2012
How to interface with the Arduino's serial port on Linux.
Garbage Collection Created: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Garbage collection is the process of freeing unused objects. It's a hallmark of many high level languages, including Ruby.
Deploying Applications with Bundler Created: Monday, February 27, 2012 Updated: Monday, February 27, 2012
Bundler works hard to make things easy. One of the things it does is allow you to
Getting Started with Bundler Created: Friday, February 24, 2012 Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012
The basics of using Bundler are very trivial, you can be up and running in just a few minutes.
What is Bundler? Created: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Updated: Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Bundler is a gem dependency manager for Ruby.
Iterating Over Strings Created: Thursday, February 16, 2012 Updated: Thursday, February 16, 2012
It's not a very common thing in Ruby. You have more sophisticated string tools (such as split or scan), but there are times when you'd want to iterate over the characters in a string. Unicode compl..
Method Visibility Created: Friday, February 10, 2012 Updated: Friday, February 10, 2012
Method visibility is crucial to implement proper encapsulation. Ruby provides ways to not only hide instance variables, but to hide instance methods as well.
Overloading Operators Created: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, January 31, 2012
What does a + b mean? That all depends on what 'a' is. Ruby allows you to define a number of arithmetic operators and they're called on the left-hand side of any such expression.
Loading and Displaying Images Created: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Loading images from files and displaying them om the screen is the one of the most basic things you can do in game programming. Luckily, Rubygame makes this really simple.
The Main Loop Created: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
The main loop is the heartbeat of any game, and is the first thing you need to learn to start making your own games.
Finishing up the Game Created: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Finally, all the pieces are in place for your game. You've learned how to create a game window in Rubygame. You can load and display images on the screen. You can move these images around. You can ..
Sprite Groups in Rubygame Created: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Now that you have a moving player, the last two things you'll need to add before you have something that can be considered a
Visual Tutorial: Installing Rubygame on Windows Created: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
A visual tutorial with screenshots showing how to install the Rubygame library on Windows, including installing all needed DLL files.
The Case Statement Created: Thursday, October 20, 2011 Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012
The case statement is a control structure that is usually quite limited in other programming langauges. However, it's quite powerful and flexible in Ruby.

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