The Book of Ruby by Huw Collingbourne

Summary: Ruby reference – sometimes hard to follow

I think Book of Ruby was aimed as elementary for the Ruby language however, Huw didn’t achieved his goal at 100%. If you take a look at table of contents you can see that most of the basics of the language are covered. And this is certainly true, but the devil lies in detail – like always.

Book is very well organized, it contains well defined chapters and sections, but at some point is hard to follow. When I was reading it, I found myself getting confused regarding particular topics. Point is – some topics are “under simplified”. This way, you can think that everybody will follow but in fact, people get confused. I know that sometimes it is tempting to tell people “just enough”, in order to make them do, at least, something. But this is a tricky way to teach.

This book should be addressed to people who are in the middle of the road with Ruby programming. It is to complex for beginners – they won’t be attracted by simple examples that don’t lead to anything “fancy”. On the other hand it is too simple for advanced users. I think it should be treated as some sort of companion book for other books – covering Rails.

Product page:

O’Reilly: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781593272944/
Amazon (in Books): The Book of Ruby: A Hands-On Guide for the Adventurous
Amazon (Kindle): The Book of Ruby: A Hands-On Guide for the Adventurous