The Ruby Way, Second Edition: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming (2nd Edition) [Paperback]

Hal Fulton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0672328844 | ISBN-13: 978-0672328848 | Edition: 2

Ruby is an agile object-oriented language, borrowing some of the best features from LISP, Smalltalk, Perl, CLU, and other languages. Its popularity has grown tremendously in the five years since the first edition of this book.

 

The Ruby Way takes a “how-to” approach to Ruby programming with the bulk of the material consisting of more than 400 examples arranged by topic. Each example answers the question “How do I do this in Ruby?” Working along with the author, you are presented with the task description and a discussion of the technical constraints. This is followed by a step-by-step presentation of one good solution. Along the way, the author provides detailed commentary and explanations to aid your understanding.

 

Coverage includes

 

•    An overview of Ruby, explaining terminology and basic principles

•    Operations on low-level data types (numbers, strings, regular expressions, dates)

•    The new regular expression engine (Oniguruma)

•    Internationalization (I18N) and message catalogs in Ruby

•    Operations on hashes, arrays, and other data structures such as stacks, trees, and graphs

•    Working with general I/O, files, and persistent objects

•    Database coverage including MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, DBI, and more

•    Ruby-specific techniques in OOP and dynamic programming

•    Graphical interfaces in Ruby (Tk, GTK+, Fox, and Qt)

•    Working with Ruby threads for lightweight multitasking

•    Everyday scripting and system administration in Ruby

•    Working with image files, PDFs, YAML, XML, RSS, and Atom

•    Testing, debugging, profiling, and packaging Ruby code

•    Low-level network programming and client-server interaction

•    Web development tools including Rails, Nitro, Wee, IOWA, and more

•    Working with distributed Ruby, Rinda, and Ring

•    Ruby development tools such as IDEs, documentation tools, and more

 

The source code for the book can be downloaded from www.rubyhacker.com

 

 

Hal Fulton has worked for over 15 years with variousforms of Unix, including AIX, Solaris, and Linux. He was first exposed to Ruby in 1999, and in 2001 he began work on the first edition of this book–the second Ruby book published in the English language. He has attendednumerous Ruby conferences and has given presentations at several of those, including the first European Ruby Conference. 

 

He has two degrees in computer science from the University of Mississippi and taught computer science for four years before moving to Austin, Texas to work as a contractor for variouscompanies, including IBM Austin.  Hal currently works at Broadwing Communications in Austin, Texas, maintaining a large data warehouse and related telecom applications, working daily with C++, Oracle, and, of course, Ruby.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hal Fulton has two degrees in computer science from the University of Mississippi. He taught computer science for four years at the community college level before moving to Austin, Texas, for a series of contracts (mainly at IBM Austin). He has worked for more than 15 years with various forms of UNIX, including AIX, Solaris, and Linux. He was first exposed to Ruby in 1999, and in 2001 he began work on the first edition of this book, which was the second Ruby book in the English language. He has attended six Ruby conferences and has given presentations at four of those, including the first European Ruby Conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. He currently works at Broadwing Communications in Austin, Texas, working on a large data warehouse and related telecom applications. He works daily with C++, Oracle, and of course, Ruby.

 

Hal is still active daily on the Ruby mailing list and IRC channel, and has several Ruby projects in progress. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. In his personal life, he enjoys music, reading, writing, art, and photography. He is a member of the Mars Society and is a space enthusiast who would love to go into space before he dies. He lives in Austin, Texas.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 888 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 2 edition (November 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672328844
• ISBN-13: 978-0672328848
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Ruby

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one of my favorite Ruby books November 8, 2006

By Curt Hibbs

Format:Paperback

People in the Ruby development community know me because I started several of the most popular open source Ruby projects (I have been active in Ruby since 2001). If you are serious programming in Ruby then there are two must-have books to keep within reach as you program: Dave Thomas' Programming Ruby; and this book: Hal Fulton's The Ruby Way.

This is really two books in the guise of one. One the surface, The Ruby Way appears to be a cookbook of Ruby recipes, and a very thorough one at that. But The Ruby Way also manages to capture the gestalt of Ruby, that intangible, indefinable philosophy behind the Ruby idioms that old-timers now take for granted.

Every programming language has its own "way" of doing things. You don't want to write Java code in Ruby, or VB code in Ruby, you should be writing *real* Ruby code. If you want to see Ruby code the way it was "meant" to be written, this is your book.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars random access for someone already knowing Ruby December 6, 2006

By W Boudville HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Yes, there are some typos in Fulton's book. But the vast bulk (and it is indeed a big text) can be profitably read. Either by someone wanting to learn Ruby from scratch or by a Ruby programmer searching for a solution to some common problem. For the former, the book may be too long. If you want to come up to speed on Ruby, ab initio, perhaps you might consider a slimmer text.

The book is best suited as a random access resource, for a Ruby programmer. As implied by the title. The 400 odd examples demonstrate a good diversity of usages of the language. Grouped according to broad topics like threads, user interfaces and networks. This helps you focus on finding a possible solution. However, suppose you can't find an exact match. The numerous examples may have one close enough to suggest an easy mod.

Granted, if a relevant example has typos, so that it won't run, that's a drag. But only a minor one. If you already know Ruby, fixing this should be a low level detail.

As far as comparing with other scripting languages, well the book does not do this. No mention at all of Perl or PHP. Probably the author regards this as outside the book's remit. The decision of whether you should use Ruby over those alternatives is something that cannot be answered by this book alone.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good choice for a second Ruby book... December 24, 2006

By Thomas Duff HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This is a book I could see being really helpful for someone who's done the Ruby tutorial and now needs to actually *use* the language to do something... The Ruby Way (2nd Edition) by Hal Fulton.

Contents: Ruby in Review; Working with Strings; Working with Regular Expressions; Internationalization in Ruby; Performing Numerical Calculations; Symbols and Ranges; Working with Times and Dates; Arrays, Hashes, and Other Enumerables; More Advanced Data Structures; I/O and Data Storage; OOP and Dynamic Features in Ruby; Graphical Interfaces for Ruby; Threads in Ruby; Scripting and System Administration; Ruby and Data Formats; Testing and Debugging; Packaging and Distributing Code; Network Programming; Ruby and Web Applications; Distributed Ruby; Ruby Development Tools; The Ruby Community; Index

Fulton states in the introduction that this book is not designed to be a "teach yourself Ruby" title. Instead, it's meant to explore the power and utility of the language by means of examples. Think of it as a *really* large cookbook-style volume. In each chapter, there are a series of how-to sections that are practical examinations of a particular technique. For instance, in the regular expressions chapter, you'll see sections such as using anchors, positive and negative lookahead, recursions in regular expressions, and detecting doubled words in text. This solutions-based approach to Ruby is perfect for someone who has covered the basics via a tutorial or some other book, but now has to actually use the language to do something. Personally, I find having a book like this is extremely valuable in making the jump from rank novice to functional developer. I know good code when I steal it... :)