Introduction
Good evening everyone here in the DEV community, I'm back again but this time I'm switching from frontend development to backend! Surprisingly, I found that Ruby was easier to learn compared to JS/React. Maybe because it was my second language I had a bit more experience to know how to tackle learning about something new. I initially struggled in the start, but so far I've been enjoying my experience with it! Stay tuned if you're interested in more details about my journey with Ruby.
Initial Feelings
Jumping from React to Ruby was a bit confusing at first, but I expected such since it was a swap from front-end to back-end development. Some of it was pretty familiar actually! For example, comparing a method in Ruby to a function in JS was very similar and I got the hang of it quickly! Swapping from using function to using def wasn't completely foreign to me, so that was a relief. I think that learning your first language is harder than learning the next, so if you're worried about struggling more with your second language versus your first don't worry too much! You'll get the hang of it quicker than you did the first since you have experience tackling problems now.
Fundamentals of Ruby
Let's talk about some important fundamentals. The first one should be simple things like puts and what a method is. I briefly explained what a method was earlier, but to put it simply I would describe it as very similar to any other function in other programming languages. I would also describe puts as logging something to the console in any other language (ex: console.log() in JavaScript.) Below this paragraph will be an example of both, so check it out if you'd like an example! Continuing with this section, other important fundamentals of Ruby would be variables such as instance variables and class variables. A class variable is a variable that belongs to a class, and an instance variable is a variable that holds a value that is local to a specific instance of an object. It might seem confusing at first, but after a bit of practice it will be easier to understand what both of those mean!
Final Thoughts
Jumping from frontend development to backend development might seem scary, but once you learn your first language you'll see that it's easier for you to tackle the challenge. Ruby is a developer-friendly backend language and I've enjoyed the time that I've spent with it so far. There were times where I felt like it was too hard for me to do, but I promise you that persistency really is the key to succeeding in what you strive to accomplish! I'm eager to keep learning more about Ruby and what it can do and I can't wait to update the DEV community again with what I've learned in a month or two. Thanks for reading my blog post and see you soon!
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