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 F.
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
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.
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 The old version is quite out of date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.
End advertisement. We now return you to your regular programming.
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.
I really like “The Ruby Way”; I would like to see it move more in the
direction of “The Ruby Way: Advanced Ruby P.ming 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).
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.
Hal F.
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 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 P.ming 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)”.
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.
There’s more to a book than a list of topics. What about depth,
starting point, assumptions of reader ability, reference vs learning
model (see Kathy Sierra’s blog), inclusion of tutorials, examples,
exercises…
(Thanks as ever to the random sig generator for an entirely
appropriate one…)
Chris G.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein
say this: because the title ‘The Ruby Way’ implies that you’re going to impart
covered as an example of metaprogramming, for example). Onigurma deserves
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.
starts looking less and less like ‘The Ruby Way’ and more like a tour of
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 P.ming 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
