From: Tom Malone <tom@...>
Date: 2001-07-23T12:57:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:18321] RE:  Ruby Book

Chris,

Thanks for the offer! However, it's not really one specific problem I'm
having - it's just that it seems that the authors assume that the reader has
a certain familiarity with other programming languages and Unix... For
instance, the following paragraph, although it doesn't have any references
to Unix or other languages, is a little confusing to me (and maybe other
beginners?:

"You can get the integer value corresponding to an ASCII character by
preceding that character with a question mark. Control and meta combinations
of characters can also be generated using ?\C-x, ?\M-x, and ?\M-\C-x. The
control version of ch is ch&0x9f, and the meta version is ch | 0x80. You can
get the integer value of a backslash character using the sequence ?\\. "

I don't know - maybe I'm just stupid.  But I am looking forward to your
book, if it's going to be for beginners. =)
Thanks for your help

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: A Bull in the China Shop of Life [mailto:feoh@fourfuzzies.org]
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 11:49 PM
To: tom@hurstlinks.com
Subject: Re: [ruby-talk:18317] Ruby Book


At 12:28 PM 7/23/01 +0900, Tom Malone spewed forth:
>Hello all!
>
> >From what I have been told, Programming Ruby is an excellent book on
Ruby.
>However, I am fairly new to programming (intermediate JavaScript skills and
>some PHP experience) and found it a little advanced for my experience
level.
>Does anyone know when another book about Ruby might be published in
English,
>maybe one that is geared more towards beginners? Are there any more Ruby
>books out there on the horizon? Thanks.
>
>Tom

I'm pretty close to finishing it myself.

Perhaps I could help you with something? What are you having a hard time
understanding?

-Chris