I've been reading the pickaxe book the last few days. As a newbie to
both Ruby and programming I have to say it's packed with an incredible
amount of information. I'm still in part 1 and just going through the
section on Regular Expressions. I find this section in particular to
be quite a challenge.
Two questions then:
Is the book more of a reference, read through and always come back too ?
Is is a good idea to have a project started at some point , perhaps
after the first section ?
Yeah, your intuition is probably right. It's not exactly an
introduction to programming in general - although those can also be
found on the web ("learning to program" etc.). And I definitively use
it as reference quite often.
Cheers
robert
···
2006/7/7, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com>:
I've been reading the pickaxe book the last few days. As a newbie to
both Ruby and programming I have to say it's packed with an incredible
amount of information. I'm still in part 1 and just going through the
section on Regular Expressions. I find this section in particular to
be quite a challenge.
Two questions then:
Is the book more of a reference, read through and always come back too ?
Is is a good idea to have a project started at some point , perhaps
after the first section ?
There's a good book by the same company, and available online, called "Learn
to Program". Perhaps you might want to skim through it before you dive into
the Pickaxe book? You can find "Learn to Program" here >> http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
I hope this helps a little.
James H
···
On 7/7/06, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com> wrote:
I've been reading the pickaxe book the last few days. As a newbie to
both Ruby and programming I have to say it's packed with an incredible
amount of information. I'm still in part 1 and just going through the
section on Regular Expressions. I find this section in particular to
be quite a challenge.
Two questions then:
Is the book more of a reference, read through and always come back too ?
Is is a good idea to have a project started at some point , perhaps
after the first section ?
On 7/7/06, Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:
2006/7/7, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com>:
> I've been reading the pickaxe book the last few days. As a newbie to
> both Ruby and programming I have to say it's packed with an incredible
> amount of information. I'm still in part 1 and just going through the
> section on Regular Expressions. I find this section in particular to
> be quite a challenge.
>
> Two questions then:
> Is the book more of a reference, read through and always come back too ?
> Is is a good idea to have a project started at some point , perhaps
> after the first section ?
Yeah, your intuition is probably right. It's not exactly an
introduction to programming in general - although those can also be
found on the web ("learning to program" etc.). And I definitively use
it as reference quite often.
Thanks James, I have Learn to Program and have been using it but
thought I'd diversify a bit in between those incredibly difficult
programming challenges in Chris Pine's book. For me Learning to
Program is a great book primarily because of the exercises. I wish
more books had assignments in them. I came to Ruby after checking out
Rails at first and wish that a book like Agile Web Development had
some exercises to allow newbs to get their feet wet. I've always
found the "tutorial/working through building an application" approach
to be limited in some ways, just my personal taste I guess.
Stuart
Stuart
···
On 7/8/06, James Herdman <james.herdman@gmail.com> wrote:
There's a good book by the same company, and available online, called "Learn
to Program". Perhaps you might want to skim through it before you dive into
the Pickaxe book? You can find "Learn to Program" here >> http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
I hope this helps a little.
James H
On 7/7/06, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've been reading the pickaxe book the last few days. As a newbie to
> both Ruby and programming I have to say it's packed with an incredible
> amount of information. I'm still in part 1 and just going through the
> section on Regular Expressions. I find this section in particular to
> be quite a challenge.
>
> Two questions then:
> Is the book more of a reference, read through and always come back too ?
> Is is a good idea to have a project started at some point , perhaps
> after the first section ?
>
> TIA
> Stuart
>
For me Learning to Program is a great book primarily because of the exercises.
Thanks!
I wish more books had assignments in them.
Well, it took me a really long time to come up with challenging (but
hopefully not *too* hard) exercises that weren't totally boring. I
bet I spent at least half of the time just coming up with exercises,
trying them, throwing them out...
Maybe I'm just a better programmer than I am a creative thinker, but I
found coming up with the exercises much harder than solving them (or
even writing the rest of the book).
Chris
···
On 7/8/06, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com> wrote: