What do I need to know before Ruby?

I'm looking 开发者_JAVA技巧to learn Ruby, I have some basic programming experience but would still class myself as a rookie to be honest. Which languages do I need to be aware and familiar with before beginning to learn Ruby?

None. Ruby works well without prior knowledge/experience.

Ruby draws inspiration from Smalltalk, Lisp and Perl, but there's no reason you'd need to know them before learning ruby (as a matter of fact it's probably easier to learn than the former two and learning Perl will probably teach you some habits you'll need to unlearn to write idiomatic ruby).

You can get straight into programming with ruby.

In terms of generic things to know I suggest you read a book, so you get one consistent message explaining all the basics.

This is a great book to teach you programming in general and it teaches you using ruby. http://pragprog.com/titles/ltp2/learn-to-program

Also have a go with http://tryruby.org - Quick ruby tutorial in your browser

Finally check out the hackety-hack project it's designed to help people learn to program, although version 1 is only just out. http://hackety-hack.com/

None, my advice: just pick a good pick about Ruby that is written for programming beginners and learn it.

There is no real need to learn another language before ruby if your goal is to program in ruby.

Of course you might learn some C (or Assembler) to get a better feeling about how stuff actually works behind the scenes. But thats not really essential.

You could also learn a Language that is more like Ruby. But you will learn how to program Ruby-style best if you just start with it.