About The Pickaxe 2nd ed. and Ruby 2

ruby-talk
1

Hi,
I have just ordered the Pickaxe 2nd ed. from Amazon. But now I am
thinking that in a near future Ruby 2 will be released and this
wondeful book is on Ruby 1.8. Well, what will happen then? Will it be
"démodé"?

2

In article <1136449760.808008.72290@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,

Hi,
I have just ordered the Pickaxe 2nd ed. from Amazon. But now I am
thinking that in a near future Ruby 2 will be released and this
wondeful book is on Ruby 1.8. Well, what will happen then? Will it be
"démodé"?

First off, I don't know if anyone really knows when Ruby 2.0 will actually be
released. The current 1.9 experimental branch is the testbed for things 2.0.
If history is any guide I doubt you'll see 2.0 before Christmas of 2006 (Matz
likes to give us all presents), so at a minimum you'll get a year of use from
the current Pickaxe. However, if I had to guess I'd say that for Christmas 2006
we'll see 1.8.6 or 1.8.7 with 2.0 not arriving til Christmas of 2007 (if it
comes earlier I'll be pleasantly surprised :wink:

I suspect you'll be glad you got the Pickaxe now because you can start using
it as a reference for Ruby 1.8 which will remain relevant for at least a couple
of years. Even if 2.0 arrives early, the current Pickaxe book will stil be
something like 95%+ compatible.... differences will likely be posted on the
web somewhere (as was the case in the 1.6 -> 1.8 transition).

Phil

···

Surgeon <biyokuantum@gmail.com> wrote:

3

"Surgeon" <biyokuantum@gmail.com> writes:

Hi,
I have just ordered the Pickaxe 2nd ed. from Amazon. But now I am
thinking that in a near future Ruby 2 will be released and this
wondeful book is on Ruby 1.8. Well, what will happen then? Will it be
"démodé"?

Should the changes to Ruby 2 be significant enough to make code
incompatible in major ways (which is unclear to me at the moment: is
has been said the in Ruby 2 may break code, but everyone tries to
avoid it, for worse or better), I'm sure someone will write up an
appendix you can glue into your Pickaxe 2nd to make it up to date
until Pickaxe 3rd is released. :wink:

The "near" future of Ruby 2 is pretty far away in my eyes, still...

···

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

4

Surgeon wrote:

Hi,
I have just ordered the Pickaxe 2nd ed. from Amazon. But now I am
thinking that in a near future Ruby 2 will be released and this
wondeful book is on Ruby 1.8. Well, what will happen then? Will it be
"démodé"?

"wild weird wondrerful ideas"
http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?Changes+in+Ruby+1.9
http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9/
http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/slides/rc2005/mgp00006.html