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Review: Ruby by Example
Posted by Eckie Silapaswang
Learning a new language cannot be complete without a few 'real world'
examples. 'Hello world!'s and fibonacci sequences are always nice as
an introduction to certain aspects of programming, but soon or later
you crave something meatier to chew on. 'Ruby by Example: Concepts
and Code' by Kevin C. Baird provides a wealth of knowledge via general
to specialized examples of the dynamic object oriented programming
language, Ruby. Want to build an mp3 playlist processor? How about
parse out secret codes from 'Moby Dick'? Read on!
The book is aimed at being immediately accessible to all levels of
Ruby programmers, however it has a very interesting slant towards the
often overlooked functional programming strengths of Ruby. If you
love your scripting languages served with a burst of lambdas and
proc objects, or you're a fan of Haskell and Lisp, this book is for
you. Anyone looking for a Rails or Web 2.0 tutorial should look
elsewhere as this book concentrates on other natures of Ruby.
SUMMARY:
The book is divided into 10 chapters that increase in complexity as
far as examples and paradigms go. The first five chapters will introduce
the core concepts of Ruby's dynamic object oriented nature.
Concepts such as variable assignment, booleans, methods, and constants
are introduced with an interactive approach - the reader is encouraged
to follow along with Ruby's IRB (Interactive Ruby) to type in the
actual code and see feedback within a keystroke. Example scripts
that readers could hack on include printing the lyrics to '99 Bottles
of Beer on The Wall', detecting palindromes in strings, and dicing
up text through a series of manipulation how-to's. These examples
are a concise showcase of Ruby's scripting abilities as a language.
From chapter 6 on, you can clearly see the author's enthusiasm for
functional programming - he confesses his love of writing the intro
chapter for proc blocks! By utilizing proc blocks and anonymous
lamda functions, Baird goes on to use these concepts to extract
code from Moby Dick, and even walks the reader through setting up a DJ
Song Sampler. Mathematically inclined programmers will be right at home in
this section and will appreciate the simple abstract blocks used to
solve the problems mentioned above.
Baird finishes out the book with a quick touch upon the Web abilities
of Ruby, including a brief introduction of Ruby On Rails, a highly
effective web development framework. Web developers and designers
will be able to manipulate css style sheets, hack up some cgi scripts,
and get a taste of Ruby's killer application, Ruby on Rails.
OPINION:
The book definitely provides great learning examples with some slick functional programming goodness thrown in for good measure. I've yet to see a Ruby book delve this far into the mathematical nature of Ruby. The author also leaves some tidbits about the history of how Ruby came about by citing other programming languages' strengths and weaknesses. Baird's honesty in this case helps round out your skill set by challenging you to not only Ruby, but to examples of related genres around.
Hardcore Rubyists will appreciate the heavier examples used to demonstrate the functional facets of Ruby, while others will make use of the highly applied examples for everyday programming problems. This book is great for all the mathematically inclined and will serve well in guiding them down the less beaten paths of Ruby.
Comments
What about newbies?
Written by BDJones on 2007-08-14 11:24:53
Will this book provide those new to Ruby or scripting the information they need to start using Ruby?
RE: What about newbies?
Written by Eckie on 2007-08-29 17:46:33
Hi BDJones,
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner - I find this book is good for newbies if you enjoy learning from lots of highly applied examples. If you're looking for more of a tutorial, you could always progress through the Ruby Cookbook or Learning Ruby (both by O'Reilly). As far as scripting information for Ruby, I would recommend the book I reviewed along with "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" which is part of the Pragmatic Programmers' series.
Hope this answers you question!
great
Written by best on 2008-04-19 08:32:45
I'm agree with you.
Written by JM John on 2008-09-06 17:13:41
Nice book, this is a new approach to programming books, something completely different.
John http://www.reviewhostgator.com/
bought a book
Written by fauzan on 2008-11-03 11:16:15
i bought the book about a month ago and it-s worth to read..(",)
great book
Written by franky on 2008-11-03 11:18:11
i agree with you too
http://rsportreviews.blogspot.com/
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