In an attempt to see the bigger picture of the Ruby programming language
I have started to put together this spreadsheet. Basically I wasn’t
satisfied with constantly having to search the net or page through my
Pick Axe book. I wanted as much of the docs condensed to the smallest
area as I could possibly conceive.
http://www.users.on.net/shawnw/miscimages/Ruby_Docs_Spreadsheet_V1.93_0.04.xls
[Link updated 23-4-2012]
Not sure if this whole thing is going to be practical or not, but it is
fairly easy to copy/paste all the methods from a class into the
spreadsheet in one go, with links intact, from the Ruby Docs webpages.
Each class expands to reveal the methods of the class. I have started to
add the formulas etc, but this is really an ongoing thing which I will
add to as I go along and update here. I’m finding just the linked Class
names very helpful to navigate the Ruby docs even as it is at the
moment. There’s a class heirarchy map on a second tab.
Has anyone seen any thing like this done already?
If you find this useful, suggest improvements and point out mistakes,
because I’m not a Ruby expert, but already I’ve learnt a lot about the
program putting this together, such as the difference between :: and #
when refering to method names, and the difference between collect and
collect!, what a mixin is, and so on.