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The Ruby Programming Language (Paperback)

by David Flanagan (Author), Yukihiro Matsumoto (Author)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 446 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (25 Jan 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0596516177
ISBN-13: 978-0596516178
Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 17.5 x 2.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 96,730 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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#9 in Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > Ruby

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Product Description

The "Ruby Programming Language" is the authoritative guide to Ruby and provides comprehensive coverage of versions 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. It was written (and illustrated!) by an all-star team: David Flanagan, bestselling author of programming language 'bibles' (including "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" and "Java in a Nutshell") and committer to the Ruby Subversion repository; Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto, creator, designer and lead developer of Ruby and author of "Ruby in a Nutshell", which has been expanded and revised to become this book; and why the lucky stiff, artist and Ruby programmer extraordinaire.This book begins with a quick-start tutorial to the language, and then explains the language in detail from the bottom up: from lexical and syntactic structure to datatypes to expressions and statements and on through methods, blocks, lambdas, closures, classes and modules. The book also includes a long and thorough introduction to the rich API of the Ruby platform, demonstrating - with heavily-commented example code - Ruby's facilities for text processing, numeric manipulation, collections, input/output, networking, and concurrency. An entire chapter is devoted to Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities. "The Ruby Programming Language" documents the Ruby language definitively but without the formality of a language specification. It is written for experienced programmers who are new to Ruby, and for current Ruby programmers who want to challenge their understanding and increase their mastery of the language.

About the Author

David Flanagan is a computer programmer who spends most of his time writing about JavaScript and Java. His books with O'Reilly include JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, JavaScript Pocket Reference, Java in a Nutshell, Java Examples in a Nutshell, and Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell. David has a degree in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his wife and children in the U.S. Pacific Northwest bewteen the cities of Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. David has a blog at www.davidflanagan.com.

Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz"), the creator of Ruby, is a professional programmer who worked for the Japanese open source company, netlab.jp. Matz is also known as one of the open source evangelists in Japan. He's released several open source products, including cmail, the emacs-based mail user agent, written entirely in emacs lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside of Japan.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The new authoritative Ruby book. Buy this, not the Pickaxe!, 26 Feb 2008

By	Mr. Peter Cooper (Louth, Lincolnshire) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Originally planned as a second edition to Ruby classic, Ruby In A Nutshell, The Ruby Programming Language is a new book by David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto (a.k.a. Matz - creator of Ruby) and published by O'Reilly. The book covers both Ruby 1.8 and 1.9 and with its esteemed authors and technical approach, is sure to become a new "Bible" for Ruby developers.

As of the start of 2008 this book is REALLY fresh and up to date. Its style is very direct and matter-of-fact; well suited for existing Ruby developers and proficient developers coming from other languages. The examples are clear and logical and the explanations concise; this is a well edited and authoritative book.

The structure of the book is a delight with ten well-defined chapters (with titles such as Reflection and Metaprogramming, Statements and Control Structures, and Expressions and Operators) that each contain a tree of sections. Consider Chapter 4, Expressions and Operators. A sample dive down to section 4.5.5.2 takes us through 4.5, Assignments; 4.5.5, Parallel Assignment; and finally to 4.5.5.2, One lvalue, multiple rvalues. This is a breath of fresh air in a Ruby reference work.

The only downside, in terms of the thousands who might be browsing Amazon looking for a single Ruby book to start off with, is that this book is so well focused on documenting the core elements of the Ruby language, it doesn't work either as a tutorial / beginner's introduction to Ruby, or as an exhaustive reference work (as, on both fronts, the Pickaxe attempts to be.) This lack of dilution may be an ultimate strength, however, since anyone above the station of "beginner" will be able to learn Ruby thoroughly from this book, use it as a general reference, and then be able to use the exhaustive documentation that comes with Ruby itself to cover the standard library and built-in classes.

In conclusion, whether you're an existing developer or a newcomer to Ruby, you need just three things to be up and running with Ruby in the book / documentation department. Forget the Pickaxe and its mediocrity, and buy this, the Ruby Way (by Hal Fulton), and learn how to use the documentation that comes with Ruby.

This book will act as your "Bible" for the Ruby language, the Ruby Way will make you an expert, and learning how to use the documentation that comes with Ruby will mean you're not using information that's out of date within a couple of years. The perfect combo! It'll last you for years.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully dense book, 9 Jul 2009

By	Knut Haugen (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I chose this book as my first ruby book and my introduction to the Ruby language. And for me that worked out really well. I would not recommend this book as an "introduction to programming" kind of book but as an introduction to ruby for people who have been programming for a time and used several other languages, it's great and it's kind of a language reference but better written than most language references I've come across earlier. It's blend of a language reference and how-to-write-ruby and a really great blend at that.

It's seldom to come by a book where there is so much information packed into so few pages (relatively), and it should maybe be read more slowly than other programming books. Especially the last few chapters are incredibly dense. And as far as I can tell, it covers just about anything there is to know about ruby and there is code examples in abundance. The diff between ruby 1.8 and ruby 1.9 is pulled of quite nicely as well although the book would be even clearer if it had just covered one version. All in all a great book.

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2 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A VERY important book., 19 Oct 2008

By	David Roderick (Northern UK) - See all my reviews

This book is more than a book. It will be one of THE books that will change the face of human development and subsequent history. I have rarely esteemed a book so highly as this one. This book is as significant as the complete works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, or Einstein. Matz seems to be an expert in educational theory and also linguistics of the English language. The reader experiences a circular learning curve. Within 70 per cent of the book the reader experiences a 3-fold revelatory cycle into the insight and the eventual beauty of the genius of the mind which is Matz. The subject matter is explained in levels. If you think you know it read it again. Every time you read it you see something new. It is like a painting by Rembrandt. You will never leave this book. David Flannagan is also a very accomplished author.
In computer science there are no short cuts. Without a masters understanding of the grammar and structure of communication which is code, the user will waste many weeks and months getting nowhere quite randomly. This book will change the way that you look at the Ruby language forever, and you will never achieve this from any other book, because this is an unbeatable book. If you have no interest in being a developer or end user of any ruby code, this book is not necessary to develop the "hello world" project.

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