 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, Second Edition for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
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 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 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
From the Publisher
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Apart from an introduction to the syntax and classes, a major plus point is that it also provides information on core utilities: documentation with RDoc, and package management and deployment with RubyGems. Also, there are chapters on using Ruby for CGI scripting and SOAP web services, and an introduction to building GUIs with Tk. The last half of the book is a reference to the built-in classes and modules, and the standard library, which you will find yourself referring to regularly as you make your first steps.
My one problem is that the examples are too fragmentary. There's a jukebox application that is sketched out, but only to cover the basics. Many of the examples are admittedly contrived, and serve only to illustrate potential gotchas and corner cases rather than standard usage. As I began deploying Ruby for my own scripts, I found myself having to scamper back and forth across the entire book to get everything I needed to make a script run.
That said, this is a nice, comprehensive book. It's not been the life-changing event for me that it appears to have been for some, but it's well-written and it'll get you going quickly.
Once you need to go somewhere that the rails doesn't take you, you'll need to know ruby. That's where this book comes in to play.
This book teaches you in a concise and clear way. Soon you'll understand ruby - which differs quite significantly from most other programming languages. When you've broken down the barriers of understanding you'll wonder why other languages are not made like this.
The book comprises of an initial step-by-step approach that introduces you to the language and its concepts with practical examples and good explanations, and a second part that gives a comprehensive reference for the latest version of Ruby.
In the end you'll know everything you'll need to know to make great apps using ruby.
I started the tutorial on the rails web site and it really did blow me away. I ordered both the Ruby and Rails books from Amazon immediately and have been devouring chapters daily from both.
Ruby is an excellent language. Fully OO, and a lovely syntax. I thought Java was nice (and it is), but Ruby is a real gem ... :-)
This book will enter the halls of great books like "The C Programming Language", "The Java Programming Language" and "The C++ Programming Language".
It is very well thought out, very concise, and avoids the pleonasms and verbiage that afflict some languages. It has some features that I've not found in other languages: the code blocks and 'yield' constructs are really nice. Don't think of it as an OO version of Perl: it is so much more than that.
If you want to learn Ruby - this really is a superb place to start. If Ruby is going to prove to be a challenger to Java in years to come, then this book is a perfect place to start your Ruby journey. It is indeed a mine of information.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Information Systems
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Object Oriented
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > JavaScript
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > Ruby
- Books > Computing & Internet > Software & Graphics
- Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > Web Scripting & Programming
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
