From: Peter Szinek <peter@...>
Date: 2006-12-22T05:24:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Just starting out, where do I go from here?

Alexander York wrote:
> This is my first experience with any kind of programming language.
> 
> I purchased The Pragmatic Programmers Guide (for Ruby) aka "Pickaxe."
> I started to read through it, but found it dived in a bit too deep
> initially; making references to perl and not fully explaining the
> construction of the first example program, regardless of the
> aforementioned it looks to be a great guide for someone with a little
> more experience than myself.
> 
> Ruby-lang.org led me to Chris Pine's tutorial which was excellent for
> someone who knows nothing, but I can't find anything that picks up where
> he leaves off that carries that same style and in depth teaching.
> 
> Where I have interest in going with Ruby
> 
> -Screen scraping eBay for specific products/information
> -(unrelated but need help finding this)Image recognition software
> -Web based management for screen scraping and storing of data/pdf
> creation of auctions
> 
> could anyone point me in the right direction, maybe any articles on this
> stuff? I know of scrAPI and Ruby on Rails, but I am new and do need
> direction.

I have found "Ruby for Rails" the best fit for this situation (I also
felt that the pickaxe is about a level or two higher what I needed in
the beginning). Actually I just blogged about this:

http://www.rubyrailways.com/book-review-ruby-cookbook/

(it is mainly a review of the Ruby cookbook, but the starting part is
addressing your situation a bit).

wrt the screen scraping: I am just finishing a (IMHO) very easy to use
(=considerably easier than scrAPI since you need no CSS/XPath or any
kind of special knowledge) yet quite powerful Web scraping framework
called scRUBYt! (scRUBYt! eats ebay for breakfast ;-) - basically I am
waiting for the release of HPricot 0.5 (I am using some features from
the edge-Hpricot trunk) and I need to add a few minor features but
basically I am more or less ready - the exact release time depends on
_why more than on me I guess :).

I would be more than happy if you could try it so I would have some
real-life scenario feedback.

Cheers,
Peter

__
http://www.rubyrailways.com