From: Phil Tomson <rubyfan@...>
Date: 2006-11-07T07:03:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Book wanted: Metaprogramming in Ruby

On 11/5/06, Jay Levitt <jay+news@jay.fm> wrote:
> Now that Hal, David B, Curt, and others have some spare time:
>
> I'm an old-school, procedural programmer.  I skipped C++ and Java, and went
> straight from PL/I to Ruby.  Wow, times have changed!
>
> So I haven't developed the idioms that powerful languages like Ruby make
> possible: reflection, method_missing-isms, binding, continuations, lambdas,
> blocks, etc.  My code still looks like it used to, only prettier.
>
> I've seen some articles on metaprogramming online, but none are both (a)
> soup-to-nuts walkthroughs and (b) Ruby-specific.  Besides, I think this is
> a topic worthy of a book-length screed.  Ideally, it'd assume basic
> knowledge of Ruby syntax and of programming in general, but not of dynamic
> programming.  Maybe write it with a C programmer in mind.
>
> Anyone wanna write this next?


We do need an advanced Ruby text.  I think a lot of what it would
cover would be metaprogramming.  It would also be nice if it covered
things like functional programming (kind of like the "Higher Order
Perl" book).  I'd like to be involved in writing some chapters for a
book like that (esp metaprogramming and DSL chapters)... but I wouln't
want to write a whole book as it's just way too much work for one
person (with not much return, really).  However, "many hands make the
work easier"  - if we got 4 or 5 people together to work on an
advanced Ruby book it would likely get done a lot faster and it
wouldn't seem like an impossible task.  Are there other potential
authors who feel the same way?

Phil