Re: book

> I am a C++ and Java developer and I would like to have a look at 
> ruby in my spare time.

Always nice. The more C++/Java people that know ruby at least, the
higher the chance Ruby gains more smart people ("smart" in the way
as so much "experienced and knowledgable" in general, not so much
about being a "genious". I think everyone can learn ruby, no matter
how "smart" or "not so smart" one is, I just wanted to emphasize on
the technical knowledge aspect part.)

> I prefer reading a book to reading online docs (when possible)

I feel similar although I think in the not so distant future we
might really embrace other technologies. I actually prefer paper
for many reasons - my eyes like paper more, I can mark parts
with colours, emphasize other parts, scribble things down quickly,
am independent of a computer as well... In general I love
paper. (Poor them trees, but alas they grow back ;> )

However I do also store knowledge in a non-paper format, and
this has a few other advantages. I can search a lot faster for
it, I can rearrange the look and feel rather easily, and
reassemble the content quite easily too. I hope one day I
can combine both, maybe not on paper, but on something that
is flexible enough. :-)


I think by far the best ruby book is the Pickaxe. Personally I can
not recommend any other ruby book. I think there simply are not
enough ruby books. Yes, we have a collection of many scripts
in the ruby cookbook, but I did not find it as useful as the Pickaxe
back then.


> Maybe a "Learning Perl for experienced programmers" would 
> have been the best way to start.

I guess so, but the more one learns, the less one can learn from
a specific book. It will normally target a bigger audience.

I think, honestly, the best way is to just write ruby code in
order to learn Ruby. With irb one can easily go through Hash,
Array and Strings and learn all these basic operations.
Enumerator is important too. I think thats it mostly.

Designing simple classes is super-easy as well, and does not
require a lot of boilerplate code. I think writing a SMALL
game is a good idea, like tic-tac-toe or some other game.
(I made my first ruby game too big, i started it 5 years ago...
i added a lot of features too quickly, and although it has only
4000 lines of ruby code, I got too bored to actually finish it... :(
but I learned from this endeavour. )


> So, I am a bit skeptic about buying "Learning Ruby" as I do 
> not like to spend money on a book that lasts me 2 days,

Then don't ;)
I did not buy it and I think it is perfectly fine to write
ruby without having lots of books.



> For now I am more interested in the language than in Rails, so 
> I would try and avoid Ruby on Rails books, but if you think 
> the best introduction to Ruby is a part of a Ruby on Rails book, 
> then I would could consider one.

I bought that "Agile Rails" book... I am not sure if it is good
or bad, because I have not finished it :(
I think i will not finish it .... maybe I can use it as a reference
but compared to Pickaxe, I really hardly have any use for it.
(And I do not use the Pickaxe that much anymore, though I plan to buy
the latest one once its in print-format. I dont like pdf's, I enjoy
spending less time in front of the PC and reading a book is still
so much nicer than reading on my monitor)






> Ruby has a minimal definition that leads to extremely 
> expressive programs. You really don't need to read 
> very much to start using it, and the rest is learning
> how to Google for snapshots of Ruby libraries in 
> action. No book can replace that.

I agree basically with that. The best way to really learn Ruby
is by:

- writing ruby code, even if it is easy
- sometimes look into the other people's code (it might be
hard to understand, but there will come a time when it is no
longer really that difficult to understand.)

You just have to embrace that sometimes things can be
super-terse and short in Ruby.


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