The Well-Grounded Rubyist [Paperback]

David A. Black (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1933988657 | ISBN-13: 978-1933988658 | Publication Date: June 4, 2009 | Edition: 1

The Well-Grounded Rubyist takes you from interested novice to proficient practitioner. It's a beautifully written tutorial that begins with the basic steps to get your first Ruby program up and running and goes on to explore sophisticated topics like callable objects, reflection, and threading. Whether the topic is simple or tough, the book's easy-to-follow examples and explanations will give you immediate confidence as you build your Ruby programming skills.

The Well-Grounded Rubyist is a thoroughly revised and updated edition of the best-selling Ruby for Rails. In this new book, expert author David A. Black moves beyond Rails and presents a broader view of Ruby. It covers Ruby 1.9, and keeps the same sharp focus and clear writing that made Ruby for Rails stand out.

Starting with the basics, The Well-Grounded Rubyist explains Ruby objects and their interactions from the ground up. In the middle chapters, the book turns to an examination of Ruby's built-in, core classes, showing the reader how to manipulate strings, numbers, arrays, ranges, hashes, sets, and more. Regular expressions get attention, as do file and other I/O operations.

Along the way, the reader is introduced to numerous tools included in the standard Ruby distribution--tools like the task manager Rake and the interactive Ruby console-based interpreter Irb--that facilitate Ruby development and make it an integrated and pleasant experience.

The book encompasses advanced topics, like the design of Ruby's class and module system, and the use of Ruby threads, taking even the new Rubyist deep into the language and giving every reader the foundations necessary to use, explore, and enjoy this unusually popular and versatile language.

It's no wonder one reader commented: "The technical depth is just right to not distract beginners, yet detailed enough for more advanced readers."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David A. Black is a Senior Developer at Cyrus Innovation, Inc., and the director of Ruby Power and Light, LLC. He has been programming in Ruby since 2000, and is also a director of Ruby Central, Inc., the parent organization of the International Ruby Conference (RubyConf).

Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; 1 edition (June 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933988657
• ISBN-13: 978-1933988658
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Computers & Technology > Web Development > Web Services

More About the Author

David A. Black is a well-known Ruby programmer, trainer, consultant, event organizer, and author. David has been programming in Ruby since 2000, and is currently the director of the Ruby/Rails consultancy Ruby Power and Light, LLC. A founding director of Ruby Central, Inc. and a Ruby standard library contributor, David has written or contributed to a number of popular books about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, including "Ruby for Rails", "The Rails Way", and "Ruby in Practice".

You can contact David via http://www.rubypal.com, the Ruby Power and Light home page.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best, first book to discover ruby ..., June 6, 2009

By 

grantmichaels "grantmichaels" (sarasota, fl) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (Paperback)

i've had a tenuous relationship w/ ruby for the past 18 months, which began when a friend sent me the 'pickaxe' and agile rails books over the 2007 holidays. that duo is widely regarded as the de facto introduction to programming with ruby on rails, however, i'd qualify that statement to perhaps only apply to working professionals coming over from another language/framework. i both 1) don't think rails is the best framework for a new ruby coder (sinatra is), and 2) don't think the Pragmatic book is the best introduction to ruby. the well-grounded rubyist didn't exist when i got started, so the first book to pique my interest was the 'beginning ruby' book by peter cooper (apress), and while i was very happy to have found that title over a year ago and having purchased several books and screencasts related to ruby since, the well-grounded rubyist is absolutely the best book to become familiar with ruby at present. the reasoning is consistent w/ my reviews of other books for other programming languages, and is such that there is /NO REPLACEMENT/ for the author being a first-rate educator. a quality instructor is somewhat selfless, always focused on presenting the subject as a first priority, and particularly not how the subject relates to themselves. most programming books are written by practitioners, and since ruby hasn't become particularly available as an option for computer-science students in most programs, there is a very definite void in regard to the number of real teachers writing texts on ruby. i had struggled against my previous experiences coding (asm) and while i learned a lot of the tactics to code in ruby over the past year and half, i never really understood 'why' things worked the way they did. whereas before reading this book i was primarily remixing other people's code, now i'm writing my own code and it feels much more natural. just as "jQuery in action" seemed to open my eyes to the world of javascript, this Manning title has finally opened up the rubiverse and to say that i'm ecstatic really just begins to do this book justice. i can't imagine that you wouldn't find this book the best place to start w/ ruby at this time ...

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars important read, June 24, 2009

By 

J. Mucsi (Dublin, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (Paperback)

If you have any doubts about your Ruby knowledge, then you should read this book. After months of frustration while looking at source code and wasting time with Why's Poignant Guide, I made it a point to read through all pages of the Well-Grounded Rubyist. Once I was done, the difficulty was gone. Now I can read Rails code with ease, all the code makes sense and I feel like I entered a whole new world. David Black guides the reader through the topics he feels are most important. I resisted the temptation to put down the book and start programming, but I am glad I waited. The book is so useful that having finished it, you will be on a new level and your next task will be to learn how Ruby's powerful features can be combined into non-trivial frameworks. If you skip this book, you risk writing mediocre code, at least until you are forced to learn the features and techniques of the language...the hard way.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very disciplined, accurate, language tutor, August 16, 2009

By 

New England Yankee (Northern New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (Paperback)

David Black has written a thoughtfully balanced book on Ruby basics and best practices. Thankfully, it doesn't waste a single page on things better off on a website somewhere. For example, no elaboration of differences between Ruby 1.9.1 and earlier versions. (Which are, in fact, found on the book's website!)

The book is written referencing Ruby 1.9.1. Be aware that as of this writing, there isn't a 1-click installer on the Ruby language site for 1.9.1 for Windows, and the binaries-only download doesn't include a few key DLLs. If you want to continue using 1.8.6 until an up-to-date installer comes along, the bulk of the book will still be perfectly usable, however. The last note on Windows is that there is text sprinkled throughout the book on such things as paths and other configuration minutia which is specific to Mac and Unix installs. This should not trouble the readers intended for this book in the least.

As a practical matter, since the author spends no time on basic programming concepts, you'll have to have some programming experience to take best advantage of this book. Expressed differently, there is no wasted text for its audience. As one with such experience, I found this to be a perfectly-conceived bootstrap approach to the language. Anyone already having basic OO concepts already should have no difficulty following this book (mine being Smalltalk).

The author and publisher appear to have taken great pains in the flow, layout, and editing to produce a virtually error-free work. I'm enormously appreciative of that; for its own sake, of course, but also because error-riddled computer book are all too common. There are some very minor errors posted on the book's blog on the publisher's website, but they are trivial, in my opinion (programmers are persnickety, particularly about semantics, and rightfully so).

Black's intent is to walk the reader through key aspects of the language, OO as it directly relates to Ruby, and a slice of the core library. Take note of the last comment - this is NOT a comprehensive language reference covering the entire core library. Instead, the author is trying to cover those portions of the library he deems most important to understand when learning Ruby. He succeeds. While the book starts out with the simplest of Ruby's elements, such as syntax, by the end of the volume, you're well into more advanced usages, including reflection, overriding core behavior, and more.

One of the best programming books I've bought in terms of clarity, presentation, and flow. And over 25 years, there have been a lot of them.