From: Benjohn Barnes <benjohn@...>
Date: 2006-03-23T06:39:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for [...] programmers


On 22 Mar 2006, at 00:35, Jason Perkins wrote:

>
> On Mar 21, 2006, at 6:22 PM, Doug Bromley wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> I've come across an online book concerning Ruby for Perl  
>> programmers but
>> I've yet to find any for other languages.
>>
>> The Pick Axe book is a little to slow and simplistic telling far  
>> to many of
>> the core fundamentals of programming OO in general.
>>
>> I'd like a book that gives more of a conversion from one language  
>> set to
>> another.  Pointing out idioms and syntactic differences.
>>
>> A programmers Ruby guide/tutorial.
>>
>> Does anyone know of anything that may help me in this?
>
> You may want to give Hal Fulton's, "The Ruby Way," a try. More  
> advanced material and includes chapters on moving to Ruby from Perl  
> and Python.

Curious; I found it was a lot less advanced, and gave far more rote  
stuff I could find anywhere else (using abstract data types to  
describe trees and stacks, etc). For the most part, I skimmed the  
chapters and found almost nothing I didn't already know. Ironically,  
from my very limited exposure to Ruby, it didn't at all hint at "the  
ruby way"; it gave the feel of doing things very conventionally.

But then, the Pickaxe turned up at the same time as Ruby for me, and  
together, they re-ignited my love of programming, so I probably have  
an overly positive slant on it.

I wonder - perhaps the gaps in my generally c++ background was well  
filled by the Pickaxe book, where as yours was well filled with The  
Ruby Way?

Cheers,
	Benjohn