What books to buy?

Ruby
1

Hey all!

     I aspire to become a great Ruby as well as Rails developer.

But what books should I buy?

     01

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0974514055/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceProgramming
Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition
02
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/097669400X/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceAgile
Web D. with Rails: A Pragmatic Guide (Pragmatic Programmers)
03
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596101325/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceRuby
on Rails: Up and Running
04
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596527314/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceRails
Cookbook (Cookbooks (O’Reilly))
05
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596523696/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceRuby
Cookbook (Cookbooks (O’Reilly))

     Is this a good mixture? For instance, with 02, do I really

need 03? Or with 03, do I really need 02? Please give me your input
guys. I don’t have too much money to spend.

Thanks,
Kyrre

2

Kyrre Nygård wrote:

    Hey all!

    I aspire to become a great Ruby as well as Rails developer.

But what books should I buy?
Start with David Black’s Ruby for Rails.

3

Kyrre Nygård wrote:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/097669400X/ref=ord_cart_shr/102-8499224-6872917?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glanceAgile

    Is this a good mixture? For instance, with 02, do I really need

03? Or with 03, do I really need 02? Please give me your input guys. I
don’t have too much money to spend.

Thanks,
Kyrre

I would buy the Second Edition of Agile Web D. With Rails
directly from Pragmatic (in beta), and download the required “Edge
Rails”. For background, I would buy Programming Ruby in PDF from
Pragmatic, since the paper versions aren’t updated as frequently. And I
would buy David Black’s “Ruby for Rails” from Manning, which isn’t
listed in your selections. I believe it’s available in both PDF and
paper.

Well … you said you aspire to becoming a great Ruby/Rails developer.
:slight_smile: If that’s too much for you, just get David Black’s book and play
around with the tutorials.

4

James B. wrote:

Spend your remaining money on books about software development and
software engineering, not just Ruby stuff.

You mean there aren’t any Ruby-specific software engineering books? :slight_smile:

But seriously, for someone on a low budget, start with David Black’s
book, then start accumulating PDFs from Pragmatic on an “as-needed”
basis. All the good software engineering/agile practices are
well-represented in the Pragmatic bookshelf.

By the way, I never did see any info on the original poster’s experience
level or background. I assumed from the post that he was an experienced
programmer who wanted to branch into Ruby and Rails, given his initial
selection.

5

Kyrre Nygård wrote:

    Hey all!

    I aspire to become a great Ruby as well as Rails developer. But

what books should I buy?

Go get David Black’s book, Ruby for Rails, and then use Google for free
Ruby tutorials and guides and API docs. And ask a lot of questions
here.

Spend your remaining money on books about software development and
software engineering, not just Ruby stuff.

–
James B.

“A principle or axiom is of no value without the rules for applying it.”

  • Len Bullard
6

Definitely Agile Web D. with Rails by Dave T.

Dave

7

Get Agile Web D. by Dave T. & Ruby for Rails by David
Black. I would also get the pdf of Programming Ruby by Dave T. as
it is a great reference.

Take the time to get out of rails and do some straight ruby coding.

8

On 10/15/06, Kyrre NygÃ¥rd [email protected] wrote:

I would go in for David Black’s book, Ruby for Rails first.

9

Thank you all for such wonderful advice!

My background is basically just simple shell scripting.

I wish to avoid PDF because I don’t want to hurt my eyes too much.

So anyway, how come nobody mentioned O’Reilly?
I thought they were good at it!

All the best,
Kyrre

10

At 23:09 14.10.2006, James B. wrote:

Spend your remaining money on books about software development and
software engineering, not just Ruby stuff.

–
James B.

“A principle or axiom is of no value without the rules for applying it.”

  • Len Bullard

Hello James!

Yes I would be really interested in that.
Any suggestions?

I see one here that looks good:

Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects

How about that?

Thanks,
Kyrre

11

Kyrre Nygård wrote:

I see one here that looks good:

Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects

I’ve looked at that, it seemed fairly good to me.

I also recommend Refactoring and Design Patterns and
The Pragmatic Programmer.

And if you want to look “under the hood” at all, you should
read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

There’s also a second edition of The Ruby Way coming out
in a week or two. Some people like it.

Hal

12

Hal F. wrote:

I also recommend Refactoring and Design Patterns and
The Pragmatic Programmer.

Along those lines, avoid “Head First”, a little too detractingly silly
for me. And “Code Complete” could be a possible alternative / complement
to The Pragmatic Programmer. (Warning, C++ and its -isms inside. Very
down-to-earth and universally applicable book otherwise, especially for
making “real-world” software.)

For learning Ruby itself, I went fine with the free online Pickaxe and
then reading the 1.8 release changelog - more than enough if you’ve
learned enough programming languages already to know they’re all the
same at a level anyway :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

However, I’d get Pickaxe 2nd ed for the cleaned-up printable standard
lib reference.

David V.

13

At 7:18 PM +0900 10/15/06, Kyrre Nygård wrote:

So anyway, how come nobody mentioned O’Reilly?
I thought they were good at it!

Although I’m sure that O’Reilly has some books in the works,
their only Ruby/Rails book (that I know of) is

Ruby in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference
Yukihiro M., 2002

Although it is certainly authoritative (:-), it is not really
appropriate as an introductory text.

Here are some books I’d like to see:

Algorithms in Ruby
Robert Sedgewick, ???

This would show how to implement assorted algorithms,
using Ruby's peculiar control structures, etc.

Higher Order Ruby
Mark-Jason Dominus, ???

This would take MJD's notions from Perl, where they
are hard to implement, to Ruby, where they aren't.

Programming in Ruby
David Black

This would be an "expanded subset" of "Ruby on Rails".
It would teach programming, using Ruby as the language.

-r

http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich M.
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume [email protected]
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development

14

I’ll +1 on the suggestions to go for Ruby for Rails, Agile Web
Development with Rails 2nd Ed, and Programming Ruby 2nd Ed. They all
fill different niches, and I’m a book person.

On 15 Oct 2006, at 11:18, Kyrre Nygård wrote:

So anyway, how come nobody mentioned O’Reilly?
I thought they were good at it!

The Pragmatic books have some sort of link in with O’Reilly, so
O’Reilly get credit by default. Having said that, O’Reilly have slid
down a long way from the near perfection of their early books, pre-
perfect binding. Now they’re just good, but publish the odd lemon.

On 15 Oct 2006, at 15:26, Hal F. wrote:

There’s also a second edition of The Ruby Way coming out
in a week or two. Some people like it.

It’s on my wish list, Hal.

On 15 Oct 2006, at 17:03, David V. wrote:

making “real-world” software.)
I feel just as uncomfortable with the Head First books - although
some people seem to find them useful, and I always recommend students
to review them. Too much ADD teen talk for me.

Refactoring is important to read and understand. ‘Design Patterns’,
however, have always felt to me like restating the obvious, and far
too tied in to C++ to be of much use outside; there is a feeling
that, in an ideal language, every case in Design Patterns would be a
trivial part of the language. Ruby makes a good example for that
argument.

I am also uncomfortable with Code Complete, although I find it hard
to express why - and it could just be the Microsoft association. I
view The Pragmatic Programmer as the junior introduction to The
Practice of Programming; pick one or both, according to your level.

Sticking with software engineering, you need some background on
version control (Subversion), possibly the Pragmatic book, and read
up on Test Driven Development; possibly the Pragmatic book as well,
although they don’t do one specific to Ruby.

Paul

15

On Oct 15, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Rich M. wrote:

Higher Order Ruby
Mark-Jason Dominus, ???

This would take MJD's notions from Perl, where they
are hard to implement, to Ruby, where they aren't.

Not a book and I’m not finished with it yet, but:

http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/category/higher-order-ruby

James Edward G. II

16

and read up on Test
Driven Development; possibly the Pragmatic book as well, although they
don’t do one specific to Ruby.

Unit testing isn’t strictly equal to TDD, mind you. Former is a Good
Thing To Do more or less always (with no specific constraints on when to
write tests, and what to test how - the point is to get you a safety net
against stuff going up the proverbial creek), the latter an agile
development flavour, usual disclaimers about applicability apply. In the
land of TDD, fowlerettes lurk - watch out for the particularly deranged
ones. (Believing lessay mocking a RDBMS instead of using a testing
server is a good idea is a telltale sign of brain damage.)

David V.

17

Hal F. wrote:

And if you want to look “under the hood” at all, you should
read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Ah, now there’s a challenge for the authors amongst us – translate
this book from Scheme to Ruby!! Any takers??

18

On 15/10/06, David V. [email protected] wrote:

In the land of TDD, fowlerettes lurk - watch out for the particularly
deranged
ones. (Believing lessay mocking a RDBMS instead of using a testing
server is a good idea is a telltale sign of brain damage.)

Good to see such a well-argued, logical and rational argument for not
using
mocks in tests.

19

On 15 Oct 2006, at 17:41, Rich M. wrote:

This would take MJD's notions from Perl, where they
are hard to implement, to Ruby, where they aren't.

Programming in Ruby
David Black

This would be an "expanded subset" of "Ruby on Rails".
It would teach programming, using Ruby as the language.

I like those.

Further to which, I’d really like to see a rewrite of Chris P.'s
book. I didn’t feel that it did a good enough job of introducing new
programmers; although there was obviously a lot of thought put into
the ordering of concepts, some aspects could have been improved. In
particular, I left that it needed a lot more exercises and solutions
for the student to follow.

Paul

20

James M. wrote:

Good to see such a well-argued, logical and rational argument for not using
mocks in tests.

I’ll have a pint of irony to go with that shot of sarcasm.

There’s a time and place for mocks. Substituting resources / environment
that’s not under your control during production / ever (the network,
user input) with mocks is indeed fine and useful, I even my life-saver
success stories with that. Substituting an essential runtime component
that is under your control at development-time, and operates predictably
or controllably, like a RDBMS, or a webserver to avoid their influence
on the test process is patent nonsense if the test is to provide
feedback on actual behaviour of the components.

David V.