I don’t much like programming language tutorials. They’re useful for getting the general sense of what a language is all about, but they inevitably elide too many crucial details to teach you how to write a real program.
When I got interested in Ruby, I read the on-line version of Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide and floated in a confused, dreamlike state through Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby.
I didn’t feel like either one gave me a complete grasp of the language, though. I started digging into the standard library documentation — my usual second stop when learning a new language — but found it pretty brief and confusing for a newcomer to Ruby.
Then I picked up a copy of The Ruby Cookbook. This was the perfect programming book for someone who likes to dive right in and start writing programs. It’s not just about Ruby the language, nor is it a tour of the standard library. Rather, it’s a comprehensive list of everyday programming tasks — ranging from “Building a string from parts” to “Managing Windows services” — with solutions for how to do them in Ruby. Each solution is followed by a discussion of the whys and wherefores, the language features or external libraries involved. Reading the discussions gives insight into how Ruby works and why it works the way it does.
The Ruby Cookbook was an enjoyable way to learn Ruby, which I now use for the majority of my work. It’s even got some geek humor embedded in its code examples, like this one on string templates:
template = 'Oceania has always been at war with %s.' template % 'Eurasia' # => "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia." template % 'Eastasia' # => "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
Not long after reading the book, I got to know one of the authors, Leonard Richardson, and his wife Sumana. Nice people, and Leonard’s a good cook of the non-Ruby variety as well.
I’ll end with my favorite code example in the book, in a section about the IMAP email client library:
From: jabba@thehuttfoundation.org Subject: Bwah! --- From: jabba@thehuttfoundation.org Subject: Go to do wa IMAP