The community that grows up around a programming language is one of its most important strengths. Ruby has a vibrant and growing community that is friendly towards people of all skill levels.
If you are interested in getting involved, here are a couple of places to start:
- Ruby User Groups
- Your local Ruby user group is a great place to network with other Ruby programmers. Ruby user groups are self-organizing and typically feature monthly meetings, a mailing list, a Web site, and if you are lucky, frequent codefests.
- Ruby Mailing Lists and Newsgroups
- Ruby has an assortment of lists on different topics and in several languages. If you have questions about Ruby, asking them on a mailing list is a great way to get answers.
- Ruby on IRC
- The Ruby Language IRC Channel is a wonderful way to chat with fellow Rubyists. (Previous Chat Logs)
- Ruby Core
- With Ruby 2.0 underway, now is a fantastic time to be following Ruby’s development. If you are interested in helping with Ruby, start here.
- Weblogs About Ruby
- Very little happens in the Ruby community that is not talked about on the blogs. We’ve got a nice list of suggestions for you here for getting plugged in.
- Ruby Conferences
- Ruby programmers around the world are getting involved in more and more conferences, where they get together to share reports on work-in-progress, discuss the future of Ruby, and welcome newcomers to the Ruby community.
- The Ruby Mentor Project
- This new resource aims to pair people new to Ruby with more experienced guides. The goal is to ease the process of learning Ruby by having someone you can ask questions of. This is intended to be a little less intimidating than a mailing list, though Ruby Talk does welcome questions from beginners.
- General Ruby Information