Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition

I finally decided to review this book, having read it quite some time ago. The reason I waited this long is that I feared I wouldn't have been able to provide a fair assessment of the merits of this book. My problem is that, nowadays, I get easily bored reading yet another programming book. And a book entirely dedicated to a single programming language was bound to bore me infinitely. That's what happened, actually. I got so bored that it took me a really long time to finish it, even after skipping entire chapters. I managed to finish it only because I forced myself to do it. I know Ruby is cute, and has lots of nice and innovative features, but I just can't stand anymore reading operator precedence tables, variations on the basic control structures and core libraries. Last time I got excited by a programming language was with Java, and that was circa 1995. I'm too old for that. But I must try to stay objective and think how useful "Programming Ruby" could be to a young programmer and I have to admit the answer would be: a lot! As is customary with titles from The Pragmatic Programmers, quality is very high, both from a content point of view and from a presentation one as well. Well written, it even manages to inject a bit of humor into a dry subject. If you want a one stop shop reference for all Ruby, that's it! Not much more to say, except that I'd have liked, at times, the code samples to be longer, more structured and less contrived, but it's a minor nit. I suggest that you read it in bits and pieces, not cover-to-cover and if boredom gets you, you can always get a little of why's (poignant) guide to Ruby as an antidote.

I found this book to be very informative. I am new to Ruby however I have read many other programming books. This book is comprehensive a very good guide for examples for code and most of all the book is laid out in a very comprehensive way. I had no problems finding code concerns that I had and needed to understand. This book is for the serious Ruby programmer.

This is "the book" if you want to learn Ruby. I had my share of the web-search-print-and-try approach to get a taste on Ruby, and after reading this book I can say I haven't been so pleased to learn a programming language in a while. This book it's proof of what the "Ruby way" is. It doesn't just walk you through the details, dos and don'ts of the programming language, it allows the reader to grasp the practice of the "Ruby way" of doing things. And it's a clean, elegant, yet powerful way! It's been such a nice experience it got me home late several times... I ended up at the subway terminal and making my way back for missing my station! I sincerely recommend it ... and if you are tempted to invent excuses for getting home late, then have him/her read it too!

This book accomplishes everything it's intended to accomplish. It thoroughly documents the language, gives you a decent idea of the spirit behind Ruby, and is a comprehensive reference for the built-in API. That said, it isn't that great a book. The writing style is awkward. Its structure is not especially cohesive. The standard library reference in chapter 28, which gives a one-page description of each module, is unhelpful. It should either be reduced to a one-line description, or expanded into a comprehensive reference and put into a separate volume. In general, this book ought to be about a third as long as it is. The core language is not a lot larger than C, but the size of its book is ridiculous when compared to K&R. If you're planning on doing any serious work with Ruby, then by all means buy this book. It's the best available and you won't get far without it. I just wish that weren't the case.

I'm not sure how much the times have changed, but I got the second edition of this book on pre-order. At that time it was a fantastic references. It told me everything I ever wanted to know about the Ruby language. From the nice tutorials at the beginning to the excellent language and API reference toward the back. It even goes into some of the nitty gritty implementation details and has a chapter on writing C extensions.

This book is about the worst reference book I have ever purchased. At no point does it give a complete picture of the information it is trying to portray. For example on page 585 in the reference section, it talks about the Process.kill built-in. However, it does not list the signals that one might use use with this command and it does not specify anywhere in the book. It makes no attempt to be complete and much of the data you need to learn a feature such as the syntax for something simple like "if" is spread out in unrelated examples throughout the book. Badly written and incomplete. The only reason it got 1 star is that is the minimum possible rating.

Very well written and comprehensive primer for Ruby. Knocking one start off because this was the top result when I searched for it, leading me to buy it, but there are newer editions for later versions of Ruby available that should have been ranked much higher.

I dont have a lot to add here other than what the subject saya - having worked with multiple other languages (including perl) this book is a good reference and start point to get to know the basics of ruby before getting started on rails and such (if you want to know the basics of ruby behind it, which many rails manuals fail to address), like what and why and how a :symbol works in magical ways :) I read the first few chapters in full, then using it as a reference now.

I came across Ruby on Rails about 2 months ago, and originally discovered Ruby about a year ago, but did not delve much into it. I started the tutorial on the rails web site and it really did blow me away. I ordered both the Ruby and Rails books from Amazon immediately and have been devouring chapters daily from both. Ruby is an excellent language. Fully OO, and a lovely syntax. I thought Java was nice (and it is), but Ruby is a real gem ... :-) This book will enter the halls of great books like "The C Programming Language", "The Java Programming Language" and "The C++ Programming Language". It is very well thought out, very concise, and avoids the pleonasms and verbiage that afflict some languages. It has some features that I've not found in other languages: the code blocks and 'yield' constructs are really nice. Don't think of it as an OO version of Perl: it is so much more than that. If you want to learn Ruby - this really is a superb place to start. If Ruby is going to prove to be a challenger to Java in years to come, then this book is a perfect place to start your Ruby journey. It is indeed a mine of information.

Zen of Programming for beginner to top reference for accomplished

Strong points: - Written in a good style by the famous pragmatic-programmers team :) - A good introduction to Ruby "from programmers to programmers" including a nice tutorial and a good language reference. - Skips the boring details of teaching you what programming is. - Covers a lot of useful topics from Unit Testing and Duck Typing with Ruby, to Ruby Gems and web development with Ruby. - Represents a very comprehensive reference for Ruby 1.8. All the built-in classes and modules and almost all the standard library are documented! Weak points: - Some examples do not work well (or not at all!) on Windows. - Some areas could have been more thoroughly investigated (especially web development with Ruby - a very hot topic now). - The tutorial feels a bit slow.

Este es sin duda el libro de referencia para los desarrolladores Ruby. Si bien no es un libro para leer de forma seguida, se trata un elemento que no debe faltar en tu escritorio si te dedicas al desarrollo con Ruby

Quando ho acquistato il libro il suo prezzo era attorno ai 4 euro (USATO). Le condizioni erano ottime e la spedizione è stata veocissima arrivato due giorni dopo dall'inghilterra. Il libro è un'edizione vecchia ma quella nuova ha un costo molto più alto. Se si è dei principianti in programmazione questo libro è sicuramente sufficiente. Il libro si trova sul sito ufficiale in formato pdf in modo gratuito ma io consiglio il libro per avere sempre tutto sotto mano.