Who hasn’t dreamt of packing up and just leaving their daily lives behind for a while? A Newfoundland girl and her German partner have done just that! Sherrie McCarthy, an English language teacher from Newfoundland Canada, and Patrick Schweizer, an IT consultant from Sindelfingen, Germany, are doing just that. They are escaping their daily routines for three months by embarking on a motorcycle adventure with their two new best friends “Betty” and “Wilma” – two matching motorcycles. The adventure starts in Stuttgart… and then what? Their ultimate destination is Mount Nemrut – also known as the throne of the gods because of its ancient burial sites and enormous stone statues, in the south east of Turkey. The route will bring these two adventurers through Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and most of Turkey, where they will no doubt encounter many exciting new adventures. On the way back they will cross through northern Greece and all of the Balkan states. An adventurous young couple, 2 motorcycles, and three months on the road, wonder what will happen next? Keep up with couples adventures at: Patrick’s site – mostly in German and Sherrie’s site – in English.
A few years ago, I came across the Ruby programming language, and I fell in love. Somehow, it just seemed to work the way my brain works—I can express myself in Ruby more naturally and with less intervening fluff than in any other language I know. [...] And now, for the first time, I can seriously say that Ruby is ready for the enterprise. The language is stable, the libraries are great, and there is a growing pool of talented and enthusiastic Ruby developers, all rising to the challenge. Dave Thomas (Schmidt 2006, Foreword)
Ruby ist eine Programmiersprache, die 1995 von dem Japaner Yukihiro Matsumoto veröffentlicht wurde. Sie wurde durch die Sprachen Perl, Eiffel, Ada, Smalltalk und Lisp inspiriert. Die herausragenden Eigenschaften von Ruby sind:
Vollständige Objektorientierung. Es existieren keine einfachen Datentypen.
Die durch Lisp inspirierten Closures erlauben mächtige Operationen.
Ruby Mixins, die eine elegante Art der Mehrfachvererbung darstellen.
Das dynamische Typsystem, das große Flexibilität ermöglicht.
Die Ausbalancierung zwischen funktionaler und imperativer Programmierung.
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