Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition (Paperback)

by Dave Thomas (Author), Chad Fowler (Author), Andy Hunt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Ruby is an increasingly popular, fully object-oriented dynamic programming language, hailed by many practitioners as the finest and most useful language available today. When Ruby first burst onto the scene in the Western world, the Pragmatic Programmers were there with the definitive reference manual, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.

Now in its Second Edition, author Dave Thomas has expanded the famous Pickaxe book with over 200 pages of new content, covering all the new and improved language features of Ruby 1.8 and standard library modules. The Pickaxe contains four major sections: An acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby. The definitive reference to the language. Complete documentation on all built-in classes, modules, and methods Complete descriptions of all 98 standard libraries.

If you enjoyed the First Edition, you'll appreciate the new and expanded content, including: enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby's capabilities using C-language extensions. Programming for the world-wide web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems and other web services. There's even a new chapter on unit testing.

This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. "Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I'm working with it this book is at my side" --Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks

About the Author
McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Thomas, before moving the U.S. in 1994, founded an IS09001 certified English software company that delivered sophisticated, custom software projects throughout the world. He is an independent consultant.

Chad Fowler is an internationally known software developer, trainer, manager, speaker, and musician. Over the past decade he has worked with some of the world's largest companies and most admired software developers. He loves to program computers and, as part of his role as CTO of InfoEther, Inc., spends much of his time solving hard problems for customers in the Ruby language. He is co-organizer of RubyConf, RailsConf, and RailsConf Europe and author or co-author of a number of popular software books.

Dave Thomas and original co-author Andy Hunt are founders of the Pragmatic Programmers and the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Product Details

• Paperback: 829 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 2nd edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974514055
• ISBN-13: 978-0974514055
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #119,513 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

140 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Do I really have to learn _another_ programming language :-), April 24, 2005

By	Randall Helzerman (campbell, ca) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are like me, a busy programmer, I know you are wondering when you hear about Ruby, "Do I really have to learn yet another programming language?" I mean, Java, C#, Python? When will it ever end?

Well, it ends when you die, and yes, you do have to learn another programming language :-) But you'll like Ruby, I promise. Things I like about Ruby:

0. As easy to write scripts in as Perl, but it really scales.

1. Exceedingly self-consistent. Ruby has fewer syntactic warts than any programming language I'm familier with. All the features hang together very nicely.

2. Duck Typing: If you use a variable like a string, its a string. If you use it like a float, its a float. If you are familier with Haskell or or similarly typed languages, you get the idea. Ruby gives you about 80% of what Haskell gives you here.

3. Nice module system. This implements a nice mix-in facility--which gives you the power of C++ templates, with more structure. Also eliminates the need for multiple inheritance.

4. Wacky features like call/cc for the true language freaks.

Oh, so you want to know about the book too? Well, I agree with some of the reviewers here who describe the book as less of a tutorial/visionary screed/inspiring gospel and more of a reference manual. But I don't think this is a fair critique of the book. Back in the 60's, before the internet, a language needed a book to do for it what K&R did for C, or what Clocksin & Mellish did for prolog.

But today, you learn about a language by surfing the web. Instead of just duplicating what is available on the internet, this book complements the web, by supplying in a nice portable package what you need to know about Ruby which _can't_ be (easily) gotten from the web. Its a "post-internet" volume in this fashion.

Really the only critique of the book I can offer is that its description of Ruby/TK, the default GUI programming library for Ruby, is a bit abrieviated. It gives you the basics and the refers you a book about Perl/TK for the details. Please guys, in the next edition expand on this!

Ruby is a language which is as object-oriented as smallTalk, as flexible as Scheme, has the scriptibility of Perl, and a nice C-ish syntax. What's not to like? This book is the book to buy if you decide to learn Ruby.

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy successor to the indispensable original, November 6, 2004

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Dave has done it again. Taking what was already an excellent first edition and growing it by 50%. He has updated all of the original chapters, the language walkthrough and the library reference.

Like most language books Programming Ruby starts with installing Ruby and then goes into a language reference; strings, classes, blocks, regular expressions, etc. It's all covered step by step with examples. The second part, Ruby and It's World, is a grab bag of chapters on more complex Ruby topics like graphical user interfaces, Ruby GEMs, and embedding Ruby.

Part III is a concise reference for Ruby that is handy when you already know the language but need a refresher. And the final part is a library reference with examples of using each method. This is the invaluable reference that you will use in every Ruby project.

This is the book to buy to learn Ruby, and to use as a desk reference. There is no question about that.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on programming ever!, July 31, 2006

By	B. Andrews (Holly Springs, NC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am a successful self taught programmer. I have learned C/C++, Java, Perl, and now Ruby all from books and reading other people's code. I have to say this is the best book on programming for a particular language that I have ever read. And I have read quite a few.

The book itself is very well written, easy to understand, has a little humour every now and then, but not too much to be annoying.

Some of the other reviews say the chapters of the book are not layed out very well and they don't understand what the Ruby Crystallized section is for. I would have to strongly disagree with this. It starts out with installation, Hello World, then it gets right into classes, methods, variables, etc. All the good stuff. The Ruby Crystallized section is basically to be used as a reference manual to the language. Basically, if you want to skip all of the "whys" and "how-tos", just read this section and learn some of the standard API and you're good to go. But if you want a little more in depth ( which is what I want ), start from the beginning of the book. I think the book was designed so that you really don't have to read the entire thing to get a good grasp of the Ruby language and it's concepts. The cool thing about this book is that it has most of the Ruby standard libraries in the back for easy reference. Not a lot of programming books have this.

I had the opportunity to hear Dave and Andy at a conference just recently and I tell you these are 2 really intelligent, great guys. It was a real joy reading this book. And Ruby is really a joy to learn and program!