What is the bes Ruby's book for beginners?

[Renato Veneroso]

Hi everybody,

This is my first message to this forum.

I'm interested in learning Ruby and would like to know what book you
think I should start with. I've worked as a developer for over 17 years
and as a Java developer for 3 and a half years. However I don't know
anything about Ruby. So I need a book that teaches Ruby from the
scratch.

What book do you advice me reading? I want a book that is good both in
content and easiness of reading and learning.

Sorry if this question has been posted before. I did a quick search on
the forum trying to find a topic like this one but I didn't find it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

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Renato Veneroso wrote:
| Hi everybody,
|
| This is my first message to this forum.
|
| I'm interested in learning Ruby and would like to know what book you
| think I should start with. I've worked as a developer for over 17 years
| and as a Java developer for 3 and a half years. However I don't know
| anything about Ruby. So I need a book that teaches Ruby from the
| scratch.
|
| What book do you advice me reading? I want a book that is good both in
| content and easiness of reading and learning.

Well, there is _why's Poignant Guide. Chris Pine's Learn to Program
(though that is of less use for you, since you know your way around a
programming language ) is quite good, too.

Though, you might have the best result with Programming Ruby by Dave
Thomas et al.

A free version is available for free online (though, it covers Ruby 1.6,
so is a bit outdated).

Also, Huw Collingbourne just announced his introductory book for Ruby.

Note: all of these are free in one form or another, and there are
probably even more introductory books available on Amazon and in your
local Borders.


The links:

_why: poignantguide.net
Chris Pine: pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
Dave Thomas: www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
Huw Collingbourne: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Book-Of-Ruby

- --
Phillip Gawlowski
Twitter: twitter.com/cynicalryan
Blog: http://justarubyist.blogspot.com

~ - You know you've been hacking too long when...
...you dream you have to write device drivers for your refrigerator, washing
machine, and other major household appliances before you can use them.
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[7stud --]

Hi everybody,

This is my first message to this forum.

I'm interested in learning Ruby and would like to know what book you
think I should start with. I've worked as a developer for over 17 years
and as a Java developer for 3 and a half years. However I don't know
anything about Ruby. So I need a book that teaches Ruby from the
scratch.

What book do you advice me reading? I want a book that is good both in
content and easiness of reading and learning.

While I don't think it is a very good book, you should probably get
"Programming Ruby 2d edition" because I think it may be the best there
is. The first part of the book is a tutorial, and the second part of
the book is a Ruby reference, which you definitely need because the Ruby
docs are so bad.

As a back up book/reference, you might want to try "The Ruby Way (2nd
ed)".

 

[Victor Reyes]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Although I have over a dozen Ruby books, I find myself using the following
two very frequently:

The Ruby Way - 2nd Edition Hal Fulton
Programming Ruby 2nd Edition Dave Thomas

Victor

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Phillip Gawlowski <

 

[Tim Hunter]

Hi everybody,

This is my first message to this forum.

I'm interested in learning Ruby and would like to know what book you
think I should start with. I've worked as a developer for over 17 years
and as a Java developer for 3 and a half years. However I don't know
anything about Ruby. So I need a book that teaches Ruby from the
scratch.

What book do you advice me reading? I want a book that is good both in
content and easiness of reading and learning.

Sorry if this question has been posted before. I did a quick search on
the forum trying to find a topic like this one but I didn't find it.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Ruby!

Peter Cooper's _Beginning_Ruby:_From_Novice_to_Professional_ is a good
starting book if you don't have a lot of programming experience. Since
you do have a lot of programming experience you could easily get by with
Dave Thomas'
_Programming_Ruby:_The_Pragmatic_Programmers'_Guide,_Second_Edition_,
which has already taught 1000's of people - including me - about Ruby.
If you want two books about Ruby, Hal Fulton's _The_Ruby_Way_ would be a
good book to buy next.

 

[John]

You'll love Ruby.

The book that got me really understanding how to tackle beginner
problems was Everyday Scripting with Ruby for Teams, Testers and You
by Brian Marick. It's for the true beginner.

You'll also want to devour "Ruby Cookbook" (O'Reilly) by Carleson and
Richardson. It's never farther than arms reach for me.

Unlike other books mentioned in this post, mine will cost you real,
physical legal tender.

 

[pat eyler]

I'm a fan of Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby.

http://on-ruby.blogspot.com/2007/04/reviewing-beginning-ruby.html

 

[Lee Jarvis]

I personally don't think the pickaxe book is very good for learning
Ruby from a beginners perspective. But it is no doubt a great
reference. I would go for "The Ruby Way" or Chris Pine's tutorial to
get you started.

The new O'Reilly book co-authored by Matz is also available, but I
haven't seen many reviews yet.

Regards,
Lee

 

[Rick DeNatale]

I personally don't think the pickaxe book is very good for learning
Ruby from a beginners perspective. But it is no doubt a great
reference. I would go for "The Ruby Way" or Chris Pine's tutorial to
get you started.

The new O'Reilly book co-authored by Matz is also available, but I
haven't seen many reviews yet.

On the other hand, a lot of folks seem to like the tutorial parts of
the pickaxe, and the new O'Reilly "The Ruby Programming Language" has
very little in the way of a tutorial but is a GREAT reference.

There's really no one-size fits all recommendation for a beginner, a
lot depends on what the beginner already knows, is he a complete new
comer to programming, or someone with experience from other languages,
who needs to be de-programmed first <G>

I've heard lot's of praise for Chris Pine's book, but I've got no
direct experience.

While "The Ruby Way" get's lots of recommendations, personally I was
put off by the attempt to be overly broad in coverage, but more by
very poor proofreading. I don't know about the 1st ed, but the 2nd ed
is plagued by lots of little errors.

 

[Dave Thomas]

On the other hand, a lot of folks seem to like the tutorial parts of
the pickaxe, and the new O'Reilly "The Ruby Programming Language" has
very little in the way of a tutorial but is a GREAT reference.

This is a topic that's been vexing me a lot in the last few weeks.

I'm working on the third edition, and I keep going back and forth on
the tutorial section. I personally like the quirkiness of doing things
like describing classes before expressions, simply because it gives us
a vocabulary to talk about things. But I know other people feel its
the wrong way around--explanations should build bottom up.

I've been trying it both ways, and I'm frankly stalled. I'd be
interested to hear opinions. Keep as is (perhaps losing the jukebox,
and adding a chapter on basic OO for people coming from procedural
languages), or reorder it into something more conventional?




Dave

 

[Alec Ross]

This is a topic that's been vexing me a lot in the last few weeks.

I'm working on the third edition, and I keep going back and forth on
the tutorial section. I personally like the quirkiness of doing things
like describing classes before expressions, simply because it gives us
a vocabulary to talk about things. But I know other people feel its
the wrong way around--explanations should build bottom up.

I've been trying it both ways, and I'm frankly stalled. I'd be
interested to hear opinions. Keep as is (perhaps losing the jukebox,
and adding a chapter on basic OO for people coming from procedural
languages), or reorder it into something more conventional?




Dave

....

People vary. I guess that most readers - at least in the near future -
would be cool w/ OO. I'd suggest a pointer to an appendix for those
that are not.

Thanks for the books, and Best Regards,

Alec

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

This is a topic that's been vexing me a lot in the last few weeks.

I'm working on the third edition, and I keep going back and forth on
the tutorial section. I personally like the quirkiness of doing things
like describing classes before expressions, simply because it gives us
a vocabulary to talk about things. But I know other people feel its
the wrong way around--explanations should build bottom up.

I've been trying it both ways, and I'm frankly stalled. I'd be
interested to hear opinions. Keep as is (perhaps losing the jukebox,
and adding a chapter on basic OO for people coming from procedural
languages), or reorder it into something more conventional?

I vote for keeping it the way it was in 1st. and 2nd. ed., with
classes described before expressions. The first reason is simply
because you're writing the 3rd edition of an existing book; are you
sure you want to change the fundamental structure of the book? Second,
when I read a document to get an overview of a new language, I find it
rather tedious to work through the obvious stuff first, before getting
to what makes the language interesting. "Oh, so you do addition of
numbers using the + symbol in infix notation? You don't say! *snore*"
Reading the Pickaxe 1st ed. online is what made me a Ruby programmer,
and presenting the interesting bits of the language first is what drew
me in, and made me hungry to start using it.

I feel that the Pickaxe is a great book for teaching Ruby to someone
who is already a programmer, and familiar with object-oriented topics.
It does not teach the fundamentals of programming to someone
unfamiliar with the concept. The only reason I can think of why you'd
want to rearrange the book to put the expression stuff before the
class stuff would be to rectify this, and make the book a good one for
non-programmers as well. But that wouldn't be sufficient. You'd also
have to add a lot of material explaining basic programming concepts,
like what the heck is a "variable", and a "class", what does
"assignment" do, etc. That would IMHO both make the book much longer,
and dilute the good stuff that's already there.

So I vote to keep the structure the way it is. The Pickaxe is
currently a very effective book for teaching the Ruby language to
experienced programmers, and I don't think this should be
fundamentally changed in a new edition of the same book.

 

[Ruby Freak]

Dave,
First let me say "Thank you" for your contributions to Ruby and Rails.
We wouldn't be where we are without your work.
That said, the biggest problem I had with both of your books was the
implied assumption that the reader was coming intact with prior
programming skills in PERL, PHP, C++ etc. It is a difficult decision
for any teacher to pick a target audience. Do you go for the raw
beginner and bore the advanced reader or assume a certain level of
skill and overwhelm the pure newbie. This problem is true in any
scholastic endeavor.
One method for explaining complex subjects is to have an advanced text
and a "companion" that explains the fine points. While reading
"Pickaxe", I very often found myself confused by the sample code. You
would be talking about one subject and give a eight line piece of
sample code that used GSUB and regex and several other methods that
an experienced programmer would understand, but I didn't. So there I
am Googling GSUB and other stuff and it takes me 4 hours to figure out
the sample.
Having a "Companion" web page with a wiki or blogger style discussion
for each page would have been very helpful for me. I think the site
would be self sustaining by the community just as this site is. In
fact, I guess you could simply start a Google Group for each title/
edition and users could simply create each topic as a page number,
like "Page 268" and then readers could go to that discussion and
search for it too.

Just my 2 cents

TW Scannell

 

[Dave Thomas]

Having a "Companion" web page with a wiki or blogger style discussion
for each page would have been very helpful for me. I think the site
would be self sustaining by the community just as this site is. In
fact, I guess you could simply start a Google Group for each title/
edition and users could simply create each topic as a page number,
like "Page 268" and then readers could go to that discussion and
search for it too.

These are good points. The PickAxe was never intended to teach
programming, but it's hard to know just how much to assume.

For a companion site: each of our titles has it's own discussion
forum, accessible via the book's home page (the link is under the
cover picture). That might be a good place to organize that kind of
community discussion.


Dave

 

[Rick DeNatale]

There is a new book out co-authored by Matz, the man who created Ruby. It's
called The Ruby Programming Language, and it is very, very good.

It's only a couple months old, but it is the most up to date (1.8 and the
not-yet-released 1.9). Because of its age, it's not likely to be recommended
by a ton of people here, but it was written to be _THE_ source on the Ruby
language.

Check it out!
-Dana

It is a very good book, and might serve as an introduction to Ruby for
some readers. However, it's really much more of a reference book than
a tutorial, and I suspect that for some people it would serve better
as a second book on Ruby.

 

[Renato Veneroso]

Hi folks,

Thank you all for replying my message.

After reading all your advices I decided to take a chance with
"Beginning Ruby" by Peter Cooper. One thing I always do before buying
any book is reading the book reader's review on Amazon website. In the
case of "Beginning Ruby" it is almost an unanimity that it's an
excellent book for beginners. Of course I'm not a novice programmer (I'm
new only to Ruby) and some parts of the book may not be so useful for
me. Nevertheless, it seems the book will give me the background I need
to get into the Ruby world.

Thank you very much again.

Renato

 

[Marc Heiler]

I recommend the Pickaxe book.

I still use it, especially because it has a nice and extended reference
section.

 

[Markus Arike]

I'm interested in learning Ruby and would like to know what book you
think I should start with.

I would like to also recommend The Ruby Programming Language by David
Flanagan and
Yukihiro Matsumoto. It is a well written, incredibly detailed
discussion of all ascpects of the Ruby Language.

In much the same manner as in his book, Javascript: The Definitive
Guide, the author has a knack for clearly describing the inner-workings
of Ruby.