I'm learning to program and have chosen Ruby. Should I upgrade to Ruby 1.9?

Question

I’m a complete non-programmer who is learning to program with Ruby and the Rails framework.

I’m currently using Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 3.0.3, but I’m wondering if I should upgrade to Ruby 1.9 since I don’t really have any “legacy” costs with upgrading.

What’s the downside? Am I going to run into compatibility issues with common gems, or even other issues that I don’t know enough about to even anticipate?

Answer 1

You should upgrade. Don't stick start with 1.8.7. If you find gems that don't support 1.9.2 avoid them (as they are most likely not maintained). If you have any questions over whether or not a gem is 1.9.2 compatible you can look it up at: http://www.railsplugins.org/. If you are running a UNIX based system you can easily upgrade with http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/.