The Ruby Programming Language

Really good book for both general knowledge and reference. Just wish that they sold programming books in my country as getting books online is always expensive.

Bueno como lectura y como referencia. Gracias a el muchas cosas de rails que me parecian magia ahora son ciencia.

I am currently learning Ruby with this book, and it really does its job. The author starts with a first familiarization, and then examine one by one all the possibilities of the language. This being modelled after the classical Kernighan and Ritchie C language book makes the structure both familiar and effective.

The Ruby Programming Language is an amazing book. It is a full comprehensive guide to the language including many advanced topics and is ideal for any programmer who wants to master the Ruby language.The author assumes the reader has a sound foundation in programming another language and often gives excellent examples and analogies for people that may already understand a concept or context in C/C++, Java, Perl, or Python for example. He does the same to warn about things that are different or reversed to avoid confusion, e.g. (pseudo phrasing) "If you're a Java programmer, note that [it] works the opposite way in Ruby. Instead of..." I would not recommend this book to you if you don't have any experience programming but anyone with a sound handle on the basic fundamentals of coding with instantly fall in love with it.The book is sectioned and organized masterfully making topics easy to find and forward and backward references found throughout the book are helpful instead of a hinderance. The book may have to be read mostly in order for someone who has no previous experience in Ruby, but the topics are contained well enough so that someone looking to hone their skills in certain areas can find what they need very easily. In the extremely rare event that there is an error in the book it is always something like the font appearing too close together or a misspelling in a comment in one of the code examples. Literally, the worst error in the book is that in one code example the author ended a sentence in a comment with a comma by mistake instead of a period.Ruby is a very powerful and versatile language. As such the book covers some advanced logical material but the author is considerate enough to warn the reader ahead of time. Chapter 8 in particular, and in the interest of being complete, covers some Metaprogramming techniques that many readers might not ever need to use or know. It's there for you if you need it. The code examples are concise, well documented (even more so in potentially confusing areas), and structured beautifully.This is one of the best books I have read in a VERY long time. In fact, this book has inspired me to break an 11 year silence in technical book reviews. Wow.

The book lives up to the hype. This is a phenomenal book that talks about ins and outs of Ruby programming language.I worked with Ruby and Ruby on Rails for over a year and several years of other programming languages, but I never really delved into the Ruby language itself. I was just picking up different tricks here and there along the way. I was able to get stuff done, but I felt like I was missing the big picture. This book was perfect for my need in building my Ruby understanding ground-up.Buyer Beware!!!This is not a beginner's book on programming. This book might not even be the best book to begin programming in Ruby. This position is clarified by Matz and Flanagan early on in the book."It is easy to program in Ruby, but Ruby is not a simple language. Because this book documents Ruby comprehensively, it is not a simple book (though we hope that you find it easy to read and understand). It is intended for experienced programmers who want to master Ruby and are willing to read carefully and thoughtfully to achieve that goal."The book assumes intermediate knowledge in programming and object oriented programming in general. In order to fully appreciate the book, it's best if you are already an experience programmer.If you are a beginner looking to get started, do not buy this book.