When starting Ruby, the syntax can be quite a lot to swallow. I ended up taking a class at a local community college, but it did little more than give me some confidence and get my feet wet.
Since then, I learned the most about Ruby from "Metaprogramming Ruby". It can be an advanced read, but it conveys the FULL ruby Object model. I also enjoyed Addison Wesley's Design Patterns in Ruby. To be honest, though, once you get the basic syntax of Ruby the best way to "learn" it (which really means becoming accustomed with using the language the way Rubyists do) is to read lots and lots of code. Start out reading some plain ruby plugins or gems and move your way up from there. And NEVER assume you know what a method is doing if you haven't seen it before. Chances are in the context you see the call it might make sense, but it can be used/called in a multitude of other ways and you'd never know this by looking at a single statement. Hope this was useful to you. p.s. Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby book is a fun read as well. (Very humorous). On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Jeremy Savoy <[email protected]> wrote: > As mentioned before I'm trying to pick up a language and two > frameworks at once, which is turning out to be a real challenge, > especially considering the huge syntactical differences between ruby > and the other languages that I've been using for the past 15 years (C, > Bash, Java, MXML/Actionscript). > > Obviously the only way to do this right is to start with Ruby and > learn it well, then move on to Rails and Hobo. > > I found this Ruby book and it looks pretty good, but thought I would > ask the group for their recommendations before I spend money on any > book. The second edition covers Ruby 1.8 and 1.9, and I understand > that their were quite a few changes made with 1.8, so older books > would not necessarily be the best tools to have around. > > > http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Beginning-Ruby/Peter-Cooper/e/9781430223634/?itm=6&USRI=ruby+programming+language > > Any comments are welcome. > > thanks, > --jeremy > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Hobo Users" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<hobousers%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/hobousers?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hobo Users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hobousers?hl=en.
