From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-10-17T02:34:05+09:00
Subject: Re: A Ruby/Rails bibliography


On Oct 16, 2007, at 12:03 PM, James Britt wrote:

> Giles Bowkett wrote:
>> Sorry Jeremy, I can't help myself: it's curricula.
>> I'd say "Ruby By Example" is worth a look strictly for its  
>> chapters on
>> functional programming. My first intro to map, et al., was
>> "Higher-Order Perl." (Basically a Perl translation of "SICP.") This
>> would have been much gentler. I'd even put it in the Java guy section
>> for that reason.
>
> I was given a pre-release version of Ruby By Example, and found  
> that it it gave misleading ideas about types and classes in Ruby.
>
> For example, this was described as "casting":
>
> s = 12.to_s
>

It is like casting.
You could (and often would) make a very similar line of code using  
type-casting in many languages.
However, it is Ruby so it isn't casting.

As for the book, Ruby by example is a nice book. It covers a variety  
of interesting topics. The sad part is that it doesn't go deeply into  
any of them. The only thing that's kept me from rushing to add it to  
my Ruby library is that it doesn't go deep.

I'm still waiting for books that introduce topics from Ruby completely.
I'd love to see a CGI book that is all through Ruby.  ( for example )  
Rather than needing a Perl book to learn the Ruby