Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 Strings 1 Ruby is a programmer-friendly language. If you are already familiar with object- oriented programming, Ruby should quickly become second nature. If you’ve strug- gled with learning object-oriented programming or are not familiar with it, Ruby should make more sense to you than other object-oriented languages because Ruby’s methods are consistently named, concise, and generally act the way you expect. Throughout this book, we demonstrate concepts through interactive Ruby sessions. Strings are a good place to start because not only are they a useful data type, they’re easy to create and use. They provide a simple introduction to Ruby, a point of com- parison between Ruby and other languages you might know, and an approachable way to introduce important Ruby concepts like duck typing (see Recipe 1.12), open classes (demonstrated in Recipe 1.10), symbols (Recipe 1.7), and even Ruby gems (Recipe 1.20). If you use