# What I Learned From My First Ruby Backend Challenge

> Starting my first backend coding challenge with Ruby was honestly a mix of excitement, confusion, and a lot of “wait… what?” moments .

- Author: Bianca Correia
- Published: 26 Jan 2026
- Topics: ruby
- URL: https://biancacorreia.com/blog/what-i-learned-from-my-first-ruby-backend-challenge

Starting my first backend coding challenge with Ruby was honestly a mix of excitement, confusion, and a lot of “wait… what?” moments . As a complete beginner, this was my first real experience writing backend code, and while it felt intimidating at times, it was also incredibly rewarding. This challenge helped me understand the basics of Ruby and reminded me that learning to code is all about taking things one step at a time.

Here’s what I learned from my very first Ruby backend challenge.

One of the first things I learned is that in Ruby we use the # symbol to write comments. Comments don’t affect how the code runs, but they are super helpful for us as beginners. I quickly started using them like a little *to-do list* or reminders to explain what my code was supposed to do.

I also learned about Ruby keycodes which tell the computer what action to take. One of the first ones I used being ‘puts’ which prints information to the terminal.Seeing my code actually print something on the screen felt like a small win, but a win nonetheless.

I learned that data types describe the data type we’re working with. Some I came across were integers, float, strings booleans mainly. At first, this was a bit confusing, but understanding data types helped me make sense of errors and understand why my code behaved the way it did.

I also learned that Ruby can handle basic maths like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

As soon as my programs started growing, I realised I needed a way to store more than one piece of data at a time. That’s where data structures come in. The main one I have learnt so far is array.

The challenge included experimenting with built‑in methods for different data types and then we had to also find other methods that were not built in.

This first Ruby backend challenge taught me that it’s okay not to understand everything straight away. I learned that backend development isn’t about being perfect — it’s about practising, making mistakes, and slowly improving.

I’m still very much a beginner, but this challenge made Ruby feel a little less scary and a lot more exciting. I’m looking forward to learning more, writing more code, and trusting the process — one line at a time