Ruby Cookbook, by Lucas Carlson & Leonard Richardson

Posted September 18th, 2006 by Taran

Ruby. I've never done serious coding in Ruby, but any good programmer (and even some bad ones) will tell you that the more you have in your toolbox, the better off you are. And to date, I haven't heard anything horrible about Ruby - in fact, those in it's embrace speak of it glowingly, as those in embraces often do. So when I saw the Ruby Cookbook, I thought - Why Not?. And while Ruby has some well documented surprises, this is really a book review written by someone who isn't in the embrace of Ruby.

After playing with it through the examples in the Ruby Cookbook, I must admit Ruby won my respect in the usability department - and this came across through the book's usability.

Much of the time, a seasoned programmer doesn't want the ins and outs of the syntax of a new language - they just want the darned thing to work and work quickly because there's almost always someone who wants the results the programmer is expected to give them. As the authors wrote in the Preface:

This is a book of recipes: solutions to common problems, copy and paste code snippets, explanations, examples and short tutorials.

This book is meant to save you time...

I ended up being impressed greatly with the book - the way it is organized allows a programmer to dive in and simply get stuff done. There are about 339 recipes within this cookbook, spread over 854 pages and in 23 separate chapters. The first 8 chapters are the basics in my opinion - handling basic programming tasks. From there, it gets into more specifics, from multiple inheritance with Mixins to Reflection and Metaprogramming to Multitasking and Multithreading - while still covering interactions with other languages and common tasks applied using Ruby. XML and HTML processing. Databases. Graphics. Email. SSH. The list goes on.

I honestly spent way too much time with this book because I really enjoyed how it allowed me to play with Ruby quickly. Sure, I'm not a guru - but the book gets a KnowProSE.com 9 out of 10 for readability and usefulness - a difficult thing in the weight class it is in. A must have reference for those interested in Ruby, I'll happily recommend this book. As far as Ruby itself, well... don't tell anyone, but I sort of like it too.

Great Ruby Reference

Sep 18, 2006 by Taran Rampersad product

Ruby Cookbook

Want to dive into Ruby and get working with it quickly, getting stuff done instead of staring at the keyboard and wondering how you screwed up the syntax? Get this book.

Many copy and paste snippets for programmers new to Ruby, and some for more advanced Ruby programmers. A wide scope of topics well covered and easily read. KnowProSE.com score of 9 out of 10.

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