[rails-oceania] Awesome ruby books

[Andrew Grimm]

There are a couple of books on ruby I like, but none of them make it
into the category of "awesome". I could be setting my standards too
high, but has anyone come across such a book?

Books I like:
* Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide. The "Pickaxe"
has enough weight for the job.
* Metaprogramming Ruby. It explains how ruby works (it's useful even
if you aren't trying to do something fancy), and explores one of the
cool aspects of ruby
* Everyday Scripting with Ruby. The examples in this book are very
good. It starts off simple and gets advanced, and they're real
applications rather than contrived examples. The book has some gems of
wisdom as well.

Andrew

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[Mike Bailey]

Two interesting books full of Ruby code are 'Design Patterns in Ruby'[1] and 'Programming Amazon Web Services'[2].

The nice thing about the second one is that the examples are actually useful as they're the the point of the book.

[1] http://www.designpatternsinruby.com/

[2] http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596515812

[Nicholas Sewell]

When it comes to awesome, nothing beats Why's (poignant) guide to ruby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why%27s_%28poignant%29_Guide_to_Ruby

Only the chunkiest of bacon will do.

[Andrew Grimm]

Is it awesome because of the cartoons, or is it awesome in other ways as well?

Andrew

[Mark Wotton]

I'm rather enjoying "Ruby Best Practices". I have a tendency to write
lisp in every language I learn, so it's good to know what lispisms are
acceptable and comprehensible (rather a lot of them, funnily enough)

mark

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Nicholas Sewell <nse...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
A UNIX signature isn't a return address, it's the ASCII equivalent of a
black velvet clown painting. It's a rectangle of carets surrounding a
quote from a literary giant of weeniedom like Heinlein or Dr. Who.
-- Chris Maeda

[Dave Bolton]

Not sure if these classify as "awesome", but they certainly are PDG
(pretty darn good):

The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton is an excellent book, far better than the
Pickaxe book in my mind.
http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Way-Second-Techniques-Programming/dp/0672328844

Ruby for Rails is fantastic for learning Ruby and the way it is enables Rails.
http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Rails-Techniques-Developers/dp/1932394699

I also think Design Patterns in Ruby is very good if you've come from
a more conventional OO background:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Ruby-Russ-Olsen/dp/0321490452

Cheers,
Dave

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 6:46 PM, Andrew Grimm <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Robert Gravina]

On 26 April 2010 10:30, Dave Bolton <daveb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I also think Design Patterns in Ruby is very good if you've come from
> a more conventional OO background:
> http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Ruby-Russ-Olsen/dp/0321490452
>

I think the Refactoring: Ruby Edition book in the same series is
*much* better [1]. I read them one after the other, and the
refactoring book actually changed the way I write ruby whereas the
design patterns book was less useful (to me, anyhow). I now do things
like return early for exceptional cases, refactor when I would normal
write a comment for a chunk of code, know when/how to use methods
which wrap around blocks for reuse when there's some tricky custom bit
in the middle etc. thanks to this book... I can't recommend it highly
enough. Some people complain the text is too much like the original
Java version, but that doesn't bother me... I read it years ago, and
the text has been reworked for Ruby. I still think it's worth reading
cover to cover.. you can be excused for skipping the mechanics of e.g.
Rename Method but most of examples are worth reading through.

Robert

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Ruby-Jay-Fields/dp/0321603508

[Ben Hoskings]

On 26 April 2010 10:06, Andrew Grimm <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

Is it awesome because of the cartoons, or is it awesome in other ways as well?

It's just a really great read. It was the first book I read when I was first learning ruby, and it introduced a lot of the fundamentals to me—things like conditionals returning a value, how all the native data structures work, and what the whole idea of a block was (I'd only really written C before ruby). It explains things in a way that, for me at least, made intuitive sense, and was fun (and compared to other programming texts, irreverent) at the same time.

—ben_h

[Alan Harper]

I have to put my hand up as one of those people that simply could not read it. Trust me, I tried a few times

I've spoken to others (rc5?) with the same problem

[Nicholas Sewell]

Yep. The book is probably useful for a fun introduction for people who've never touched the language.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, a line Why crosses in about the third chapter. The logic completely disintegrates to the point where you'll be more confused after reading it. Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby is an amazing book, just not if you want to learn much about Ruby.

"I have no wife and no kids. The only thing I'll ever be remembered for is chunky bacon."

[Ben Hoskings]

On 26 April 2010 15:43, Nicholas Sewell <nse...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yep. The book is probably useful for a fun introduction for people who've never touched the language.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, a line Why crosses in about the third chapter. The logic completely disintegrates to the point where you'll be more confused after reading it. Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby is an amazing book, just not if you want to learn much about Ruby.

It definitely steps up a notch around the third chapter. However useful or not the rest of the book is, though, there's plenty of good stuff in the first two chapters, and those two alone were worth the price of admission for me. I liked the remainder too, even if all it did was made me smile.

Also, for me, part of the reason I value it so highly is that it got me excited. It reveals the ruby world to the new reader as the awesome place that it is.

—ben_h

[Julio Cesar Ody]

Yeah, the book is an icon along with a lot of other stuff _why did,
but I don't know about it being awesome.

It's like the Rolling Stones throwing a quick cover of Britney half
way through a show: they can because they're already covered as far as
being awesome goes. So if it happens, it won't ruin their cred, though
I'm sure the people who say they liked it said so because they're fans
so reality distortion field applies.

_why's Britney cover was the third chapter of that book.

--
http://crazyhollywood.org

[Mark Ratjens]

I don't know if it was just me reading things into it that just aren't there, but I found myself getting plenty of insight from the stories ... they struck me as metaphors of the programming in the chapter. I read the "ravings" and somehow found myself understanding the coding more. Mind you, I have a high tolerance for indirect teaching/learning techniques. I could imagine it coming across as irrelevant for others. For me, it was my "go to" text for quite a few months in my early Ruby experience. I think I am the richer for it.

[David Lee]

1. Matz co-wrote the Ruby Programming Language, probably the book I'd recommend for learning ruby. Surprised nobody mentioned this, as it's basically our version of the "Camel book". 

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516178

2. The Ruby Way (Hal Fulton, 2nd ed) is probably the most interesting other general book on ruby I can remember reading (or, lending out before I finished reading ...) - as Dave Bolton said, way better than the pickaxe.

[Mike Bailey]

I also found the poignant guide unreadable. I suspect you either love it or hate it (which is a great reason to check it out in vase you *love* it!*

- Mike

[Jet Abe]

If you want to learn ruby.

http://rubyquiz.com/

There is a book by the same name as well.

Btw: These questions are Tech. agnostic and some of the concepts you
would learn from here are going to stay useful for most challenging
engineering tasks.

cheers
Jet

On Apr 26, 8:21 pm, Mike Bailey <m...@bailey.net.au> wrote:
> I also found the poignant guide unreadable. I suspect you either love it or
> hate it (which is a great reason to check it out in vase you *love* it!*
>
> - Mike
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Alan Harper <a...@aussiegeek.net> wrote:
> > I have to put my hand up as one of those people that simply could not read
> > it. Trust me, I tried a few times
>
> > I've spoken to others (rc5?) with the same problem
>
> > On 26/4/2010, at 2:03 PM, Ben Hoskings wrote:
>

> > On 26 April 2010 10:06, Andrew Grimm <andrew.j.gr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Is it awesome because of the cartoons, or is it awesome in other ways as
> >> well?
>
> > It's just a really great read. It was the first book I read when I was
> > first learning ruby, and it introduced a lot of the fundamentals to
> > me—things like conditionals returning a value, how all the native data
> > structures work, and what the whole idea of a block was (I'd only really
> > written C before ruby). It explains things in a way that, for me at least,
> > made intuitive sense, and was fun (and compared to other programming texts,
> > irreverent) at the same time.
>
> > —ben_h
>
> > --
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