Alfredo Enmanuel Rico said
The definitive guide to Ruby 1.9. There isn't another resource to looking for. It isn't neccesary..
Todd Crone said
I have had this book in PDF in beta. I have a copy of the Second Edition but I still wanted this newer version. High quality as you'd expect.
T. Crawford said
I acquired the "Pick Axe" book a few months after beginning to work full time on a rails application. Prior to doing so I was thrutching my way around with various Rails books, but quickly realized I needed a solid reference to the language behind the framework.
Enter Programming Ruby-
This book has most definitely become a major resource in my daily work in Rails. Being somewhat new to the language, the pick axe book always seems to hold the answers to my small inquiries about Ruby quickly and effectively.
As such I highly recommend that any Rails developer pick up this volume and add it to their library.
Scott Lembcke said
I'm not sure how much the times have changed, but I got the second edition of this book on pre-order. At that time it was a fantastic references. It told me everything I ever wanted to know about the Ruby language. From the nice tutorials at the beginning to the excellent language and API reference toward the back. It even goes into some of the nitty gritty implementation details and has a chapter on writing C extensions.
Stefan Nuxoll said
First and foremost, this book isn't a beginners guide to ruby, it doesn't hold your hand from "Hello, world", and it expects you to already know the basics of programming. Also, this book isn't a tutorial, it's a reference book first and foremost, and while it *does* guide you through some of ruby's basics that's not the primary intent. While there are excellent tutorials for learning ruby on the web, and excellent documentation for the standard library as well, Programming Ruby is something every ruby developer should have sitting at their desk.
This isn't because ruby is a hard language, but because the core documentation, while excellent, doesn't always give you decent sample usage, while Programming Ruby will tell you how to use part of the standard library with their clever 'ruby jukebox' scenario. This comes in really handy when they tell you how to handle threads, file I/O, and especially writing extensions in C.
So while you can happily code ruby without this book, you really shouldn't.
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