As always I’m pretty late in writing my book reviews. This time it’s been well over 6 months since I finished reading the book “Beginning Ruby” (first edition) by Peter Cooper. I have to say is this by far the best Ruby book that I’ve read so far. (This is out of a 13 book collection that I own on Ruby programming.) I’ve always been a fan of Apress “Beginning” title’s, and this book is definitely not the exception. Although this book is technically considered for beginning/intermediate programmers wanting to dive to the wonderful world of Ruby, I feel this book is perfect for all levels of programming expertise. The authors does a wonderful job explain the concepts of each chapter and slowly building you to what will be the next chapter. Like Apress’ “Beginning Perl” book help me tremendously in learning the language, I have to say this book taught how to program in Ruby.
I’ll definitely come back to this book and use as a reference. Anyone new or already experienced using Ruby, will definitely benefit from reading this book. I hope this book (all editions) gets the high praise from the Ruby community, which it deserves, as in my eyes this is a classic programming book and I see this title as the Llama/Camel book for the Ruby World.
Chapter 1: Let’s Get it Started: Installing Ruby
Chapter 2: Programming == Joy: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ruby and Object Orientation
Chapter 3: Ruby’s Building Blocks: Data, Expressions and Flow Control
Chapter 4: Developing a Basic Ruby Application
Chapter 5: The Ruby Ecosystem
Chapter 6: Classes, Objects, and Modules
Chapter 7: Projects and Libraries
Chapter 8: Documentation, Error Handling, Debugging, and Testing
Chapter 9: Files and Databases
Chapter 10: Deploying Ruby Applications and Libraries
Chapter 11: Advance Ruby Features
Chapter 12: Tying it Together: Developing a Larger Ruby Application
Chapter 13: Ruby on Rails: Ruby’s Killer App
Chapter 14: Ruby and the Internet
Chapter 15: Networking, Sockets, and Daemons
Chapter 16: Useful Ruby Libraries and Gems