I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001), but am concerned that it may be outdated.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.
I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001), but am concerned that it may be outdated.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:
An then there's the material which can be found online:
Kind regards
robert
···
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I'm thinking of buying & reading Ruby in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2001), but am concerned that it may be outdated.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."
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:
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.
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
···
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:
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.
···
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.
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.