From: John Joyce Date: 2007-09-28T06:43:24+09:00 Subject: Re: Confession: I never learned CS On Sep 27, 2007, at 4:18 PM, Rick DeNatale wrote: > On 9/26/07, David B. Williams wrote: >> Jay Levitt wrote: >>> So - any recommended reading? What books will help me change the >>> way I >>> think about data? >> >> If you want a book that deals with Ruby and the fundamentals you >> would >> learn in any introduction to data structures and algorithms >> course, try >> this: >> >> http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus8/ > > A big -1 on that book. It's been discussed here before. > > It's part of a series in which the author treats different languages > as plug-in replacements. It's not at all a good ruby resource. Indeed I just read through it today and it is not good. The html is horrible too. Contacted the author and he was pretty "whatever" about it because the LaTeX2html software is apparently no longer being updated... So he's obviously too lazy to pick up xhtml and css in an afternoon and / or simply use one of the languages he writes about with one of the many converters in those language to produce a better site. He's pretty wrong about Ruby though. He unfortunately describes everything as if it's C++ but Ruby is whole different beast. Some things are similar in ways that any programming language or OOP paradigm are similar, but every language has its own vernacular and for good reason: they're different and require different approaches. There are better exercises in data structures out there, and definitely better discussions of Ruby.