Hi!

As the title says, I'm a student that will be starting my second year of C++ very soon. I've discovered Ruby, however. While I've heard much buzz about the language before, I've disregarded it because I always thought it wasn't something that would be useful.

However, I've found a number of FANTASTIC tutorials on ruby and am interested in learning it (probably because it seems so straightforward).

1. Would playing around with ruby be a good or bad idea? I understand that there's not such thing as bad knowledge, but I'm afraid that Ruby will only confuse me when dealing with C++.

2. How different from C++ is it? I've read it's based on C in some way, but my google-fu seems to be horrible today.

3. How useful is Ruby in the real world? I'm not specifically asking about jobs- I'm more interested in what sort of applications may come from this language. Any specific examples worth looking at?

4. Going back to Question two- I've read some posts on here that Ruby and C++ can hold hands once in a while. How flexible is this relationship? Is it rarely that this would work?

Thank you Very much for your time!

EDIT: This has to be the one community on the internet that doesn't suck. Why have I never posted before? You guys are awesome!