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Ruby Under a Microscope: An Illustrated Guide to Ruby Internals 1st Edition

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Pat Shaughnessy (Author)
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Pat Shaughnessy (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars 11 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1593275273
ISBN-10: 1593275277
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 360 pages
  • Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (November 22, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1593275277
  • ISBN-13: 978-1593275273
  • Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.9 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA technical deep dive that remains fun and enjoyable
By Federico Lucifredi on November 17, 2013
Format: Paperback
Ruby Under a Microscope is a remarkable dissection of the internals of Ruby's runtime environment. Definitely too much for the casual user, but an absolute must for the power user - the dissection of how hash tables work in Ruby "under the hood" is worth the book in of itself. Coverage of the innards of the runtime's garbage collection process is equally useful.

The experiments the author carries out throughout the book to show the language's behavior, or to measure performance, are not only great explanation of how things operate, they are entertaining to read - at least for those with a performance tuning eye or a desire to really understand what is going on. I love it, I have seen this done in class, I have done it myself, but it is a teaching model rarely seen in writing that fits this technically deep subject very well.

Fans of lisp will appreciate the credit that the author gives the venerable language for closures and for McCarthy's garbage collection algorithm, among other things.

The book is richly illustrated, and the diagrams help a great deal in following the details being discussed - as you can imagine, pointers^Hreferences are everywhere, and diagrams really make decoding the lay of the land much easier.

A minor negative, looks like No Starch used a lighter paper choice than their regular, thick heavy paper - a fancy attribute of their books that I have come to look forward to. I would expect this was done to limit the heft of this particular tome, that at 330-plus pages would have come out rather thick in the usual paper choice.
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5.0 out of 5 starsRelevant and mandatory - Akin to K&R's 'C' reference, or Windows Internals for the Windows OS for the Ruby developer
By Richard T. Kingslan on January 5, 2014
Format: Paperback
Ruby has become a major player in application and (by extension) Web development due to the easy to acquire skills to use the language, the expansive library sets due to the open source nature and the integration and support on nearly any platform.

Me, being a Windows OS guy, I look to major references like Microsoft Press’ “Windows Internals” to understand how things really work – not just at the surface – but why something does what it does. For example, if the distributed processing calls (DPC) result in interrupts consuming the processor, I know I’m usually looking at a driver or hardware problem.

“Ruby – Under a Microscope” is much like “Windows Internals” in that the how and why of Ruby is revealed.

What should be clear from the idea of an in-depth, deep technical details book – this isn’t for the beginner, like Microsoft Press’ “Windows Internals” isn’t for the newbie Windows OS user. If you don’t know what DPCs are and what they do – knowledge of DPCs is pretty much useless. To get the full value from this book, you should already be an experienced Ruby programmer (or have depth in similar languages). What the experienced developer will get from this book is the details that will allow them to extract more power from Ruby, better understanding of why things happen, and how to better use Ruby to solve the really hard problems.

Now that we’re past the “who this book is for” part, there is one more thing to understand before you decide that this is of value to you: Exactly WHICH Ruby are we talking about? Yes, Ruby is available on nearly all platforms.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsSee the wiring under the board
By Michael Larsen on February 12, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
Let's start with a disclaimer. I'm not a Computer Science major, nor did I complete a Computer Science course of study in school. I'm a software tester, and one that finds themselves frequently using programming languages of various stripes for various purposes. Ruby is one of the most popular languages in current use, and for many, it's a language that allows them to learn some basic terms, some programming constructs, and then lets them just use it. It's clean, it's elegant, it's almost simple. It's a language that invites the user to just go with it.

For some, though, there's that sense of curiosity... what is my Ruby program really doing? How can I see what the system is actually doing with my code? What's going on underneath the hood? If such explorations interest you, then "Ruby Under a Microscope" by Pat Shaughnessy tackles that subject handily.

A word of warning going in. This is not a general language book. You will not learn much about programming in Ruby here. You should have a decent understanding of what Ruby syntax looks like and how it works. Having said that, you don't need to have years of experience with Ruby to appreciate this book for what it does. It takes some key areas of the language, and through examples, some small programs, and a variety of tools, lets you see and understand what Ruby actually looks like up close and personal.

Chapter 1 focuses on how Ruby understand the text that you type into your Ruby program. Ruby converts your source code first into tokens, and then converts that input stream into an "abstract syntax tree”. Through tools like “Ripper”, you can see this process and watch it in something resembling natural language (well, kind of.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsPat Shaughnessy is a software engineering maven.

Learned things that the Ruby reference does not explain well enough. Also learned general software engineering concepts, not just Ruby. Read more

Published 12 months ago
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very easy to read and understand.

Published 15 months ago by Jônatas Rancan
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Excellent read

Published on July 31, 2014 by James Schorr
5.0 out of 5 starsThe title alone was enough to get my attention. What a great idea to...

The title alone was enough to get my attention. What a great idea to write a book the way Pat Shaughnessy did. I loved it. Read more

Published on February 25, 2014 by S. W. Y. Zegveld
4.0 out of 5 starsIt's like the "How it's Made" episode for Ruby

TL;DR: This book does an excellent job of explaining the C implementation of Ruby. It's very well organized and takes you on a step by step journey through Ruby. Read more

Published on December 29, 2013 by Dustin Schultz
5.0 out of 5 starsMust read for "Real Programmers" using Ruby

_Ruby Under a Microscope_ is about Ruby implementation. The "real programmer" needs to comprehend the implementation of any language s/he uses. Read more

Published on December 20, 2013 by Jack Woehr
5.0 out of 5 starsVery approachable look at Ruby language implementation

This book is not for learning Ruby syntax or about building websites. Instead, it focuses on how Ruby does work under the covers. Explanations use diagrams and are clear overall. Read more

Published on November 21, 2013 by IADev

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