From: Tom Allison <tallison@...>
Date: 2006-01-21T12:25:30+09:00
Subject: Re: My Thought on the "Pickaxe book" (from a Ruby novice)

Justin Collins wrote:
> 
> 
> Tom Allison wrote:
> 
>> ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, John Maclean wrote:
>>>
>>>> Chaps,
>>>>
>>>> Ruby seems like a great language and the book's good too. However a 
>>>> novice
>>>> like me won't be able to appreciate *.rb when there's soooo many 
>>>> examples of
>>>> "there's more than one way to do it". I learn pretty quickly and 
>>>> even faster
>>>> when I can understand a concept, test it and see that it works. How 
>>>> do you
>>>> other novices feel about this?
>>>>
>>>> This is not a rant/flame/plug my book/some other language is better 
>>>> posting ;)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> think of it as learning to drive a short throw six-speed transmission 
>>> - harder
>>> at first - so much faster once you've got it. ;-)
>>>
>>> -a
>>
>>
>> Probably true.
>>
>> But I am finding I can't really do much writing of the code, or 
>> driving of the car until I'm upwards of pages 120.  Contrast this with 
>> the first Perl Book I had from O'Reilly and it's a bit frustrating.  
>> Sorry about the perl analogy but it's my best and most recently used 
>> language.
>>
> Which book was that? The only Perl book I've read is "Programming Perl," 
> which is much like "Programming Ruby." It is meant to be the EVERYTHING 
> book, which gives you probably way more information that you ever needed 
> (the Perl book explained how strings are stored - good to know, but not 
> something you need to know right away.) It's not meant to be quick dive 
> into the language.

Learning Perl (actually from the CD).
Programming Perl is a fantastic book but only after you've exhausted the 
Learning perl book.  It's a fine example of a reference book.  As I read through 
the Pragmatic Ruby book I am seeing where it has that potential.  I'm starting 
to come to terms with it.

> So, I don't feel the Pickaxe book is good for just learning the 
> language, especially if you don't have a solid programming/comp sci 
> background already. You'll probably need to do some tutorials, etc. 
> However, it is really good if you want to know how to do a particular 
> thing.

Well, I don't have that exact background but I've always found books like the 
typical "21 days" and "dummies" are mostly useless.  no pain, no gain...  :)