There is some discussion about a second edition of The Ruby Way.
To that end, I’d like to have your thoughts about what needs to
change in it. (There’s a significant amount.)
Let’s address the largest changes first. Whole sections are likely
obsolete. Some were perhaps unimportant in the first place.
Example of a large change: REXML is probably the most common way
to process XML in Ruby. It didn’t exist when TRW1 was conceived.
A medium change: Much of the trig stuff I put in is now built in.
A small change: We have Array#inject now.
Email is preferred, unless you think that your comments call for
public discussion. (Personally I don’t wish to generate too much
public discussion at this stage.)
And yes, if this project seems likely to happen, I’ll build a wiki
to capture everything.
One small note: Don’t ask me to remove the “easy” or “obvious” tasks
such as concatenating strings. These will stay – end of discussion.
For one thing, to remove them would decrease the value of the book
as an “inverted reference” – one of its strongest points. For another,
we don’t all agree on what is easy or obvious.
But any and all comments are welcome. Just be aware I won’t bend on
the above issue.
There is some discussion about a second edition of The Ruby Way.
To that end, I’d like to have your thoughts about what needs to
change in it. (There’s a significant amount.)
As many have said: YAML. This is one of Ruby’s strength since of all the
languages out there, YAML support is strongest in Ruby. Please, lots of
examples and use cases: writing config files, replacing XML,
dump/restore of data structures, and playing along with other languages.
And then there’s wxRuby.
And of course we should mention RubyForge.
And, last but not least, lots more talk about Ruby2 please. Including
possibilities for Parrot integration, how it [possibly] will change
threads, String, etc. A rundown on the important/potential RCRs would
also be juicy to read…
There is some discussion about a second edition of The Ruby Way.
To that end, I’d like to have your thoughts about what needs to
change in it. (There’s a significant amount.)
Let’s address the largest changes first. Whole sections are likely
obsolete. Some were perhaps unimportant in the first place.
Example of a large change: REXML is probably the most common way
to process XML in Ruby. It didn’t exist when TRW1 was conceived.
A YAML section would be good too.
i second that
And maybe a mention of community changes (like RubyForge)?
and that
I was going to ask for a fastcgi section, since I only discovered it last
week. Then realized you already have one - star
and that too! (man you are on the same wavelength
i’d add code samples/stuff from
optparse
logger
stringio
csv
mmap (unless too unix specific)
rbtree
pstore
pp
as i find all these to be really nice modules - but that’s just me. perhaps
you could set up a web vote for ‘your favorite stdlib’ and do the most popular
ones?
a section on rdoc’ing would be beneficial to the community
And, last but not least, lots more talk about Ruby2 please. Including
possibilities for Parrot integration, how it [possibly] will change
threads, String, etc. A rundown on the important/potential RCRs would
also be juicy to read…
I don’t think potential updates is something that makes sense in a
reference book. A brief overview of known changes might be nice, but
it’s far less important then what we already have. Updates are fun to
discuss but it’s not useful to those learning the language.
I loved The Ruby Way book, and am excited for an update.
But man all these topics brought up here make me hungry to
learn about these features NOW.
How likely do you think it would be that perhaps the same
number of people that would buy The Ruby Way 2nd Edition
would cough up that same amount of money to help support a
GREAT well-done professional online Ruby Tutorial site if
there was one? Something with a PayPal tip jar, that
became a GREAT place to learn Ruby from scratch?
As I’ve been learning Ruby, so many times I’m pointed to a
page that looks like this: http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/rdoc/1.9/
… and I say, “Oh. [sigh…]”. Yes it’s possible to
learn from those pages, slowly, but so much nicer to have
a well-written tutorial to get you started with some examples
so you can dig into API docs later once you understand the
context.
There are so many odd quirky unfinished ugly abandoned Ruby
websites out there, it seems to mis-represent the enthusiasm
so many of us have for this beautiful language.
I wish there was a beautiful tutorial site that made Ruby
just irresistable to learn.
That’s a great list. 1.8 has so many literally obscure modules, because
knowledge of them simply isn’t widespread.
If the scope is broadened to external modules, then the DBI and LDAP
modules would be good candidates, too. Another good candidate would be
mod_ruby, which hasn’t received good coverage elsewhere.
Apologies if any of these were touched on in the first edition. It’s
been a while since I opened it, and I can’t remember.
Oh, SOAP4R and the XML-RPC modules would probably be good candidates,
too; esp. the former.
Ian
···
On Thu 11 Mar 2004 at 07:57:00 +0900, Josh Huber wrote:
Distribution options
List on RAA
Host on RubyForge
An expanded version of this would make a great Wiki entry. Would you (or
anyone else) care to flesh it out on RubyGarden?
RubyBaby mentioned a tutorials site - is it worth making a new category
on the Wiki for these? People can just throv up a page on their
favourite library or feature. There’s already a fair bit of 1.8-relate
updates there in the section on picxaxe:TNG:
If someone wants to make a tutorial website from the content thats
fine by me,
but I only write HTML via RedCloth or Wiki these days (my wrists make
crunching
noises once I’ve typed a few dozen “<” / “>” paics).
So what about a CategoryTutorial?
Incidentally sorry for posting to list. I know Hal asked for direct
feedback but thats the ‘reply-to’ for you…
But I do think that Ruby books come out fairly rarely, so it’s not
surprising that we want to try to get the most out of it
···
On Wednesday 10 March 2004 07:37 pm, James Britt wrote:
