[ANN] Forthcoming 2nd ed. of _The Ruby Way_

ruby-talk
1

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to make them.

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

Thanks,
Hal Fulton

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

2

Hello, all.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

Congrats

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

CommandLine and its children: Application, Option, OptionParser and OptionData.

···

On 12/14/05, rubyhacker@gmail.com <rubyhacker@gmail.com> wrote:

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

--
Jim Freeze

3

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

This is just fantastic news. The old version is quite out of date and yet still my second favorite Ruby book!

Keyword soup:
...csv...

I realize this is tooting my own horn, but it would be great if FasterCSV[1] made it in there if only as a footnote. I know it's not a standard library, but it reads and writes just fine and is almost 9 times faster than the standard library. This might be important since I've seen multiple complaints about CSV speed here and on Ruby Core.

I'm also hard at work adding cool new features to it that should be in long before the book is ready. Features not yet is CSV. :slight_smile:

End advertisement. We now return you to your regular programming.

James Edward Gray II

1: http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastercsv/

···

On Dec 14, 2005, at 5:03 PM, rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

4

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to make them.

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

Thanks,
Hal Fulton

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

At least a small section on Rake would be excellent.

···

On 12/14/05, rubyhacker@gmail.com <rubyhacker@gmail.com> wrote:

--
===Tanner Burson===
tanner.burson@gmail.com
http://tannerburson.com <---Might even work one day...

5

Impressive list of topics! i will buy this book in a heart beat!

Cheers-

-Ezra Zygmuntowicz
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
ezra@yakima-herald.com
509-577-7732

···

On Dec 14, 2005, at 3:03 PM, rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to make them.

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

Thanks,
Hal Fulton

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

6

In article <1134601217.746672.19760@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to make them.

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

Thanks,
Hal Fulton

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

That's good news!
My own 2cents:

I especially like chapter 5 (OOP and Dynamicity in Ruby) in the current
edition of TRW. I hope that perhaps a similar chapter on metaprogramming can
be added.

Also: I would like to see the second edition stick to advanced Ruby
programming topics/philosophy and mostly stay away from specific libraries (so
basically staying away from a lot of the things you list above :wink: Why do I
say this: because the title 'The Ruby Way' implies that you're going to impart
the philosophy of Ruby programming. Your introduction leads to this as well.
But if you start loading up with too many specific libraries/etc. then it
starts looking less and less like 'The Ruby Way' and more like a tour of
Ruby libraries. A lot of items in the "keyword soup" are ephemeral -
is Rockit really being maintained and used at this point, for example? (and
what about Grammar?) I think you should focus on things that are not
ephemeral in Ruby.

Gems and Rake would be two 'externals' that should be included though, as they
are either becoming central to or exemplify The Ruby Way (Rake could be
covered as an example of metaprogramming, for example). Onigurma deserves
coverage because it will be the new regex engine. I'd like to see more
advanced coverage of things like using the various callbacks (included,
inherited, etc.), metaprogramming, functional Ruby (stuff like what's in the
"Higher order Perl" book).

Leave specific GUI toolkits like Tk, or Qt to another book...

I really like "The Ruby Way"; I would like to see it move more in the
direction of "The Ruby Way: Advanced Ruby Programming Techniques" or something
like that... as opposed to "The Ruby Way: A brief look at lots of
libraries(many of which will be obsolete by this time next year)".

Phil

···

<rubyhacker@gmail.com> wrote:

7

I know it's a long shot but the only thing I have found missing
from "the Ruby way" so far has been something on graphics -
ie. Ruby SDL etc. I'd love to see some pointers on that.

Leslie

8

Great to hear :slight_smile:

I really loved the original book. If you need any help with Nitro/Og
don't hesitate to contact me :wink:

-g.

···

--
http://www.gmosx.com
http://www.navel.gr
http://www.nitrohq.com

9

rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

Hello, all.

Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
know it already.

The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).

"100 pages deleted": does this mean Rb vs. perl/python sections are
expendable? I can understand, these entail a *lot* of research, &
recently there's been an explosion of R vs. p/p/java/smalltalk/lisp
blogs which can be collected on 'Ruby eye for python guy' or some
wiki.

The part of Way r.1 that's most valuable to me today is the "Things to
remember" list on pages 45+

10

<snip>

I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
interesting
stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
important, please tell me in email.

One suggestion;

ncurses or equivalent (I hope I didn't miss it in the soup or the thread :slight_smile:

Raph

11

That's good news! On my wish list are: soap, xml/rpc, wsdl

Laurent

12

rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

Hello, all.

Hi, Hal.

Keyword soup:
Java

Definitely. And maybe a few words on why it's *Java's* fault, not Ruby's, that Java's so hard to interop with. :slight_smile: I get this question a lot from coworkers.

If I think of anything, I'll send a note. Good luck!

Devin
Sorry if I duped something someone else said... quite a few replies!

13

rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

Keyword soup:
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse

Hal, we meet last year at RubyConf 2004. You signed my copy of the
Ruby Way book and we talked about Tycho and delicious amongst other
things.

Just wondering what it would take to get the jEdit Ruby Editor Plugin
into your keyword tagsoup? It's currently number one for the search
"ruby editor". :wink:

cheers,
Rob

14

... Please be sure to provide it in PDF form... That's how I have my
current edition and I really appreciate it.

j.

···

On 12/14/05, James Edward Gray II <james@grayproductions.net> wrote:

On Dec 14, 2005, at 5:03 PM, rubyhacker@gmail.com wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
> know it already.
>
> The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
> of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.

This is just fantastic news. The old version is quite out of date
and yet still my second favorite Ruby book!

> Keyword soup:
> ...csv...

I realize this is tooting my own horn, but it would be great if
FasterCSV[1] made it in there if only as a footnote. I know it's not
a standard library, but it reads and writes just fine and is almost 9
times faster than the standard library. This might be important
since I've seen multiple complaints about CSV speed here and on Ruby
Core.

I'm also hard at work adding cool new features to it that should be
in long before the book is ready. Features not yet is CSV. :slight_smile:

End advertisement. We now return you to your regular programming.

James Edward Gray II

1: http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastercsv/

--
"Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! -> http://ruby-lang.org"

Jeff Wood

15

I think it's under consideration, considering that Rake is in that
'keyword soup'.

···

On 12/14/05, Tanner Burson <tanner.burson@gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/14/05, rubyhacker@gmail.com <rubyhacker@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, all.
>
> Thought I might as well announce this "officially" as many people
> know it already.
>
> The ink is dry on the contract, and I am working on a second edition
> of _The Ruby Way_. Expect to see it second quarter of 2006.
>
> To summarize: About 100 pages deleted, about 250 pages added.
> Updated from 1.6.8 to 1.8.4 (or thereabout).
>
> If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to make them.
>
> I can't cover everything, but I want to cover the important and
> interesting
> stuff (as time and space permit). If you see it in the "keyword soup"
> below, it's under consideration. If you think I've forgotten something
> important, please tell me in email.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Hal Fulton
>
>
> Keyword soup:
> Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
> Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
> const_missing
> JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
> NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
> amrita
> borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
> Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
> enumerator
> OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
> PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
> Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
> FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs
>
>
At least a small section on Rake would be excellent.

16

Ezra Zygmuntowicz wrote:

Keyword soup:
Rockit racc rbison io/nonblock readpartial StringIO csv Oniguruma
Madeleine Oracle DBI LDAP ORMs (AR, Og, etc.) define_method
const_missing
JTTUI Qt One-click installer EXERB imap pop3 SSL ssh tunnelling OpenURI
NNTP WEBrick Redcloth Bluecloth etc. fastcgi Ruby on Rails Nitro
amrita
borges cgi-kit narf cerise SOAP REST WebDAV XML-RPC Okay (YAML)
Rinda and Ring CORBA REXML irb Test::Unit xmp pp rcov generator
enumerator
OSX KirbyBase Cocoa YAML iCal etc. vCard RSS RDF RMagick Flash (Alph)
PDF Rake mkmf extconf.rb SWIG Ruby/DL CVS Subversion gnuplot Mozilla
Java .NET RDoc RubyGems setup.rb RAA RubyForge ri vim emacs Scite
FreeRIDE RDE ArachnoRuby Komodo Eclipse Blog tools Wiki tools RCRs

Impressive list of topics! i will buy this book in a heart beat!

Thank you.

Let me clarify, though, lest anyone misunderstand -- not all of these
topics will be covered in depth. Depending on time and pages and so on,
some may barely be mentioned.

That's one reason I want assistance in prioritizing things. In addition,
some of these I know little about, and will have to learn within the
next ninety days or so, or just skip them.

Hal

17

I really like "The Ruby Way"; I would like to see it move more in the direction of "The Ruby Way: Advanced Ruby Programming Techniques" or something like that... as opposed to "The Ruby Way: A brief look at lots of libraries(many of which will be obsolete by this time next year)".

Although I haven't read the ruby way, I'd prefer to see a coverage of more advanced programming techniques in Ruby, instead of a brief overview of Library X,Y,Z, but then again how do you define advanced? My idea of advanced is Dwemthy's Array (which I actually just got my head around this week).

my 2 vitenamese dong (roughly 2/15000 c)
Kev

18

Phil Tomson wrote:

That's good news!
My own 2cents:

I especially like chapter 5 (OOP and Dynamicity in Ruby) in the current edition of TRW. I hope that perhaps a similar chapter on metaprogramming can be added.

Also: I would like to see the second edition stick to advanced Ruby programming topics/philosophy and mostly stay away from specific libraries (so basically staying away from a lot of the things you list above :wink: Why do I say this: because the title 'The Ruby Way' implies that you're going to impart the philosophy of Ruby programming. Your introduction leads to this as well. But if you start loading up with too many specific libraries/etc. then it starts looking less and less like 'The Ruby Way' and more like a tour of Ruby libraries. A lot of items in the "keyword soup" are ephemeral - is Rockit really being maintained and used at this point, for example? (and what about Grammar?) I think you should focus on things that are not ephemeral in Ruby.

Gems and Rake would be two 'externals' that should be included though, as they are either becoming central to or exemplify The Ruby Way (Rake could be covered as an example of metaprogramming, for example). Onigurma deserves coverage because it will be the new regex engine. I'd like to see more advanced coverage of things like using the various callbacks (included, inherited, etc.), metaprogramming, functional Ruby (stuff like what's in the "Higher order Perl" book).

Leave specific GUI toolkits like Tk, or Qt to another book...

I really like "The Ruby Way"; I would like to see it move more in the direction of "The Ruby Way: Advanced Ruby Programming Techniques" or something like that... as opposed to "The Ruby Way: A brief look at lots of libraries(many of which will be obsolete by this time next year)".

Phil

+1. I'd also be much more interested in pure, advanced Ruby rather than specifics of this or that library.

Jack

19

Hi,

···

2005/12/15, Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com>:

I especially like chapter 5 (OOP and Dynamicity in Ruby) in the current
edition of TRW. I hope that perhaps a similar chapter on metaprogramming can
be added.

Also: I would like to see the second edition stick to advanced Ruby
programming topics/philosophy and mostly stay away from specific libraries (so
basically staying away from a lot of the things you list above :wink: Why do I
say this: because the title 'The Ruby Way' implies that you're going to impart
the philosophy of Ruby programming. Your introduction leads to this as well.
But if you start loading up with too many specific libraries/etc. then it
starts looking less and less like 'The Ruby Way' and more like a tour of
Ruby libraries. A lot of items in the "keyword soup" are ephemeral -
is Rockit really being maintained and used at this point, for example? (and
what about Grammar?) I think you should focus on things that are not
ephemeral in Ruby.

Gems and Rake would be two 'externals' that should be included though, as they
are either becoming central to or exemplify The Ruby Way (Rake could be
covered as an example of metaprogramming, for example). Onigurma deserves
coverage because it will be the new regex engine. I'd like to see more
advanced coverage of things like using the various callbacks (included,
inherited, etc.), metaprogramming, functional Ruby (stuff like what's in the
"Higher order Perl" book).

Leave specific GUI toolkits like Tk, or Qt to another book...

I really like "The Ruby Way"; I would like to see it move more in the
direction of "The Ruby Way: Advanced Ruby Programming Techniques" or something
like that... as opposed to "The Ruby Way: A brief look at lots of
libraries(many of which will be obsolete by this time next year)".

My 2 yen for all the above.

To add the list, I would like to see a chapter or section on interface
- what is and how to create clean API in ruby.

Takashi Sano

20

I'd recommend the exact opposite. If you ignore the libraries and GUI
toolkits, the book is virtually useless. Most people are using ruby to
develop _applications_, not to learn programming for programming's
sake.