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Ruby in a Nutshell

Jeff Schwab

2/28/2009 3:50:00 PM

I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001),
but am concerned that it may be outdated. The stable version at the
time of publication was Ruby 1.6. Is this still worth the investment?

I'm really looking for an extremely concise, but in-depth guide to Ruby.
I own (and have read) the Pick Axe and The Ruby Way, but neither of
them are really what I want. I'm concerned with the mechanics, syntax,
and libraries, but most of the books (and lupine cartoons, however
amusing) just seem to be cursory love letters of the form "look at all
this cool stuff you can do with Ruby!" That's great, but it's not what
I need right now.
6 Answers

Tim Hunter

2/28/2009 4:03:00 PM

0

Jeff Schwab wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001),
> but am concerned that it may be outdated. The stable version at the
> time of publication was Ruby 1.6. Is this still worth the investment?
>
> I'm really looking for an extremely concise, but in-depth guide to Ruby.
> I own (and have read) the Pick Axe and The Ruby Way, but neither of
> them are really what I want. I'm concerned with the mechanics, syntax,
> and libraries, but most of the books (and lupine cartoons, however
> amusing) just seem to be cursory love letters of the form "look at all
> this cool stuff you can do with Ruby!" That's great, but it's not what
> I need right now.
>
>

You want _The_Ruby_Programming_Language_, by David Flanagan & Yukihiro
Matsumoto, O'Reilly, 2008. It describes Ruby 1.8 and some Ruby 1.9. At
400+ pages, it's in-depth but hardly what I'd call "concise."

--
RMagick: http://rmagick.ruby...

Robert Klemme

2/28/2009 4:13:00 PM

0

On 28.02.2009 17:02, Tim Hunter wrote:
> Jeff Schwab wrote:
>> I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001),
>> but am concerned that it may be outdated. The stable version at the
>> time of publication was Ruby 1.6. Is this still worth the investment?
>>
>> I'm really looking for an extremely concise, but in-depth guide to Ruby.
>> I own (and have read) the Pick Axe and The Ruby Way, but neither of
>> them are really what I want. I'm concerned with the mechanics, syntax,
>> and libraries, but most of the books (and lupine cartoons, however
>> amusing) just seem to be cursory love letters of the form "look at all
>> this cool stuff you can do with Ruby!" That's great, but it's not what
>> I need right now.
>
> You want _The_Ruby_Programming_Language_, by David Flanagan & Yukihiro
> Matsumoto, O'Reilly, 2008. It describes Ruby 1.8 and some Ruby 1.9. At
> 400+ pages, it's in-depth but hardly what I'd call "concise."

Jeff, IMHO the upcoming book by David A. Black could be for you -
although it is not short either. But it covers 1.9:

http://www.manning.c...

An then there's the material which can be found online:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/gett...

Kind regards

robert

Jeff Schwab

3/1/2009 3:21:00 PM

0

Robert Klemme wrote:
> On 28.02.2009 17:02, Tim Hunter wrote:
>> Jeff Schwab wrote:
>>> I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001),

>>> I'm really looking for an extremely concise, but in-depth guide to
>>> Ruby.

>> You want _The_Ruby_Programming_Language_, by David Flanagan & Yukihiro
>> Matsumoto, O'Reilly, 2008. It describes Ruby 1.8 and some Ruby 1.9. At
>> 400+ pages, it's in-depth but hardly what I'd call "concise."
>
> Jeff, IMHO the upcoming book by David A. Black could be for you -
> although it is not short either. But it covers 1.9:
>
> http://www.manning.c...
>
> An then there's the material which can be found online:
> http://www.ruby-doc.org/gett...

Thanks, Tim and Robert. I appreciate the pointers. I've read a couple
of Flanagan's books (on Java and JavaScript), and found very clear and
readable.

The Manning book looks promising, too. The site says that "The
Well-Grounded Rubyist is [a revised edition of] Ruby for Rails." I've
seen positive reviews of that book. Rails is the primary reason for my
recently rekindled interest in Ruby.

Robert Klemme

3/1/2009 3:50:00 PM

0

On 01.03.2009 16:21, Jeff Schwab wrote:
> Robert Klemme wrote:
>> On 28.02.2009 17:02, Tim Hunter wrote:
>>> Jeff Schwab wrote:
>>>> I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001),
>
>>>> I'm really looking for an extremely concise, but in-depth guide to
>>>> Ruby.

>> Jeff, IMHO the upcoming book by David A. Black could be for you -
>> although it is not short either. But it covers 1.9:
>>
>> http://www.manning.c...

> The Manning book looks promising, too. The site says that "The
> Well-Grounded Rubyist is [a revised edition of] Ruby for Rails." I've
> seen positive reviews of that book. Rails is the primary reason for my
> recently rekindled interest in Ruby.

You should be aware though that David's new book is solely about Ruby as
a language. It covers all the basics pretty good, I'd say, which is
what you seem to be after if I read your original posting correctly.

Kind regards

robert

Jeff Schwab

3/1/2009 3:56:00 PM

0

Robert Klemme wrote:

>>> Jeff, IMHO the upcoming book by David A. Black could be for you -
>>> although it is not short either. But it covers 1.9:
>>>
>>> http://www.manning.c...

> You should be aware though that David's new book is solely about Ruby as
> a language. It covers all the basics pretty good, I'd say, which is
> what you seem to be after if I read your original posting correctly.

Yes, thank you. Duly noted.

Rick DeNatale

3/1/2009 4:33:00 PM

0

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

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Jeff Schwab <jeff@schwabcenter.com> wrote:

>
> The Manning book looks promising, too. The site says that "The
> Well-Grounded Rubyist is [a revised edition of] Ruby for Rails." I've seen
> positive reviews of that book. Rails is the primary reason for my recently
> rekindled interest in Ruby.
>

Well, it's a revised edition of Ruby for Rails, updated to Ruby 1.9, but
without any rails content. It's now just a Ruby book, focused on Ruby 1.9.

--
Rick DeNatale

Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denh...
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Ri...
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-ric...
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ri...