Shanti’s Dispatches

Beginning Ruby (by Peter Cooper) is a massive tome (600+ pages!) on the ruby language.

If you want to know just about everything there is to know about ruby, it’s here in Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional. Now just reading this book won’t make you a ruby pro, but actually applying each of the things you learn will no doubt put you in a better spot than most “rails jockeys” who are just learning RoR.

For me, coming to Ruby via Rails made things a bit harder than they should’ve been. Had I been sane at the time, I would’ve read a good chunk of a book like Beginning Ruby first, before attempting to jump into Rails. But alas, many of us learned the fundamentals (and beauty) of Ruby only after being bit by the rails bug.

Just a few of the things that are covered in Beginning Ruby:
* ruby language basics (types, classes, inheritance, modules, etc)
* creating and releasing ruby gems
* parsing / working with xml
* working with URIs and files
* compressing files
* basic encryption/hashing
* … and of course some of the basics of Rails.

If you still don’t have an introductory book on Ruby, you can grab Beginning Ruby at Amazon.com and also directly from the publisher’s website (Apress).

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos