From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-12-01T22:30:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Cipher book for ruby

From: "Shannon Fang" <xrfang@hotmail.com>

> Hi all,
>
> My feeling toward C++, and ruby, and any other language is that when you
> learn it more, it becomes more cryptic. Ruby is in deed very impressive,
> powerful, and easy to read. If I write my own program in ruby, I may not
> use anything like symbol in years, but when I try to read other's
> program, I will see it, and then I will try painfully to find out what
> does that mean, and miserablly failed.

You won't program Ruby for long without using

  class Example
    attr_reader :foo, bar
    ...
  end

  module Blah
    ...
    module_method :quux
  end

So symbols are just part of Ruby growing pains.  I never had any problem with
them.  I happily understood them in attr_reader without knowing exactly what
they were.  When the time came for me to delve into them, I had online PickAxe
and dead-tree "Ruby in a Nutshell".  Everyone who's serious about programming
Ruby should have at least one book.  Online documentation can't do everything.

Gavin