Learn to Program, Second Edition (The Facets of Ruby Series) [Paperback]

Chris Pine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1934356360 | ISBN-13: 978-1934356364 | Edition: Second Edition

For this new edition of the best-selling Learn to Program, Chris Pine has taken a good thing and made it even better. First, he used the feedback from hundreds of reader e-mails to update the content and make it even clearer. Second, he updated the examples in the book to use the latest stable version of Ruby, and also to use code that looks more like real-world Ruby code, so that people who have just learned to program will be more familiar with common Ruby techniques.

Not only does the Second Edition now include answers to all of the exercises, it includes them twice. First you'll find the "how you could do it" answers, using the techniques you've learned up to that point in the book. Next you'll see "how Chris Pine would do it": answers using more advanced Ruby techniques, to whet your appetite as well as providing sort of a "Rosetta Stone" for more elegant solutions.

Computers are everywhere, on every desk, in your iPod, cell phone, and PDA. To live well in the 21st century, you need to know how to make computers do things. And to really make computers do what you want, you have to learn to program.

Fortunately, that's easier now than ever before. Chris Pine's book will teach you how to program. You'll learn to use your computer better, to get it to do what you want it to do. Starting with small, simple one-line programs to calculate your age in seconds, you'll see how to advance to fully structured, real programs. You'll learn the same technology used to drive modern dynamic websites and large, professional applications.

It's now easier to learn to write your own computer software than it has ever been before. Now everyone can learn to write programs for themselves---no previous experience is necessary. Chris takes a thorough, but light-hearted approach that teaches you how to program with a minimum of fuss or bother.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chris Pine first discovered the programming language Ruby in early 2001 and immediately began using it to build tools for his day job: programming computer games. After hours, he volunteered with gifted children teaching them advanced mathematics. With Ruby, he began to teach his students programming as well. Once he saw how easily his students learned advanced programming concepts in this environment, he decided to expand his teaching materials into a book. Chris enjoys board games and juggling, and lives with his darling wife and two darling children in darling Oslo, Norway. He is very happy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; Second Edition edition (April 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356360
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356364
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Methodology
  • #6 in Books > Computers & Technology > Software > Business > Utilities
  • #9 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Ruby

More About the Author

I'm currently living with my darling wife and two darling children in darling Oslo, Norway. Things are good. :-)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Learn Programming Through Ruby Colored Glasses February 1, 2006

By Jason Menard VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

As a relative newcomer to Ruby, one of the first things that struck me was the overall simplicity and clarity of the language. I couldn't help thinking that Ruby could serve as an excellent language to teach programming fundamentals. Chris Pine's "Learning to Program" tackles that very task. The latest title in the Pragmatic Programmers Facets of Ruby series, "Learn to Program" arms the reader with the basic skills and concepts required to write their own computer programs using the Ruby language.

The book begins with downloading and installing Ruby and then quickly gets the reader writing their first program - and it's not "Hello World". Pine instructs the reader on the basics covering everything you'd expect: numbers, strings, variables, type conversion, basic IO, methods, flow control, classes, and more. The author does a fine job making the material easy to read and easy to understand through his clear presentation and conversational tone. "Learn to Program" is chock full of simple examples, and this book is very well suited to sitting down with at your keyboard and working your way through each chapter. The chapters are short and can be absorbed quickly without bogging the reader down unnecessarily. Several of the chapters conclude with short programming assignments for the reader to attempt in order to apply the concepts just learned.

"Learn to Program" is written for those who have little to no experience programming. It is a fine introduction for the person who has never written a single line of code. It's no Dummies book though, and a certain degree of comfort and familiarity with computers is a prerequisite for getting the most out of the book.... Pine never tells us exactly who his audience is, but it would certainly be suitable for the college student, technically minded adult or gifted high school student.

As much as I like this book, and I do like this book, there are a few things that could serve to complement it. First off, I'm surprised to find that there's no index. It's not a huge book and the chapters are well laid out, but it's hard to imagine the rationale for not including an index. Also, the book could stand to have some more assignments for the reader to try. They are there, but there aren't enough of them in my opinion. It would be nice to see a companion workbook to provide more problems to work through and to provide sample solutions for those problems. While "Learn to Program" doesn't read like a textbook, add the workbook and some lesson plans and I suspect you'd have the basis for a nice course in introductory programming.

While I suspect an argument could be made as to whether or not every vital Ruby feature was covered, I would conclude that every feature required to get the beginner writing code was presented. It's important when evaluating this book to keep in mind that its purpose is to teach programming and not to teach the reader how to become a master with the Ruby language. "Learn to Program" is a fine introduction to programming and demonstrates that Ruby is well suited for this task. Read more ›

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good beginners book January 25, 2006

By Jack D. Herrington VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This is a fine introduction to programming using the Ruby programming language. It also serves as a good introduction to Ruby for programmers, though the Pick axe book would be better for that. All the basics are covered, flow control, variables, classes are covered in some detail. The text is jovial and clear.

This is a fun book that is easy to get through. If you have had trouble learning to program in the past you might like to try again with Ruby. It's a very friendly language and this book makes it even easier.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great until chapter 8 May 11, 2011

By Love to read

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book was great until Chapter 8. Now it's going way too fast without enough examples. Also there are only a few practice exercises now and they start out too advanced so that you can't do them without looking at the answers. This does not inspire confidence! There should be more practice exercises at the end of the chapter, starting with easy ones and getting harder and harder.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Aren't More Books Written Like This??? June 16, 2006

By Dan McKinnon VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

First things first, this is a wonderful book for learning to use Ruby on Rails. While reading this book, I asked myself "why aren't more beginners books written like this?" For a beginners book, the last thing that I want is a 700 page behemoth that screams THIS IS CONFUSING I AM SCARY I AM INTIMIDATING!!!!! At 150 pages, this book is concise, clear, to the point, and entertaining. For the low price that this book retails at, Chris Pine has written a book that gets away from deluging the reader with too much information, and instead gets back to basics what a BASIC book is supposed to be about (no basic the language, but basic in material).

If you want to learn Ruby on Rails and get up to speed on the ins and outs of this new, hot way to do web development with less code than ever before, pick up this book and you'll get moving in no time!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMNEDED

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn to Program, not "Learn to Program in ---" February 6, 2006

By R. Dlugy-Hegwer

Format:Paperback

When I was getting started, I spent several months using "Learn to Program in ---". While I learned a lot about that language, I missed a lot of the fundamental concepts and practices that would have made me a more effective programmer.

This book does an excellent job of teaching ***programming***. The author explains each idea in plain friendly English, and provides good examples in Ruby, one of the simplest languages. Even experienced programmers might enjoy (and benefit?) from reading this book. This book is so clear and well written, I'll also use it to teach programming to my home-schooled children when they're ready.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Introduction to Progarmming and Ruby February 7, 2006

By Matt Largo

Format:Paperback

Learn to Program by Chris Pine is a concise introduction to the world of Learn to Program Coverprogramming using an interpreted scripting language called Ruby. An initial "cool point" goes to Pine for writing Learn to Program around Ruby, which is totally free to use, copy, modify, and distribute. The examples start from the basics of getting Ruby correctly installed and configured for your particular operating system. Although Ruby is mostly developed on Linux, it is a cross-platform language that is supported on many types of UNIX, DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, MacOS, BeOS, and OS/2. I ran the examples on my Windows XP laptop without any problems, using a simple, free text editor called Textpad for some of the examples and the command line to round out my experience. The best part of it all...all of the programming tools were free! Gotta love it.

Pine aptly starts out with the essentials for most newbies to programming: data types, arithmetic operations, variables, and variable assignments. I found the overall approach and programming examples to be fun, detailed, and loaded with little tidbits of information, which gave great insight into the "how" and "why" of things. Pine's examples and explanations throughout Learn to Program were great at illustrating the power of Ruby and programming in general, without having the overtly silly and annoying tone typically found in the "Dummies" series of books.

Learn to Program progressively and painlessly takes the reader through increasing complex (for most newbies) programming concepts such as methods, classes, objects, recursion, and flow control. To reinforce the concepts in each chapter there are sections called "A Few Things to Try", which were both interesting and amusing.... One of the more interesting topics involved writing simple programs to read, write, save, and load files using YAML. (YAML is a format for representing objects as strings). It's always fun to learn how to dig around in various files to extract and manipulate information. This should also come in handy when managing log files on several OpenVMS servers I manage. Yes, there is a tested version of Ruby (version X1.8-1X014) for OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-1 and V7.3-2! The final chapter of Learn to Program tied all of the concepts together and introduced the use of blocks and procs as a step beyond using custom methods. The proc examples were an eloquent introduction into the more conceptually challenging topic of passing objects into methods and returning objects from methods. I remember learning the power of passing objects to and from methods in a college Java course (years ago), only after we were taken through the paces of writing programs the "dumb" way without knowing how to do this. I wish I had read this book before I took that class.

Learn to Program is an excellent book for anyone who has an interest in learning to program. It is written for true beginners, who have little or no programming experience. Surprising enough, Pine magically manages to go from "What is an integer?" to full-blown object-oriented programming in less than 200 pages. Another bonus is that you will be learning Ruby, one of the newer, (in my opinion) sexier programming languages currently in circulation (i.e. COBOL=not sexy, Ruby=sexy).

Learn to Program is thoroughly engaging and informative and manages to painlessly convey some pretty sophisticated programming concepts that can benefit both novice and more experienced programmers. If you want to learn to program or want a great introduction to Ruby, Learn to Program belongs on your bookshelf.

-Matt Largo

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