Reddit reviews The Ruby Programming Language: Everything You Need to Know

I think maybe The Ruby Programming Language would be as close to K&R for ruby that you could get. Unless someone has something better.

As the other posters have mentioned, I develop with Ruby as a day job doing web development on the Rails platform. That being said, I also used Ruby throughout college to do machine learning programs, genetic algorithms, and bioinformatics work. In general, Ruby's great for anything you want to just get done, without worrying about the contortions that some of the other explicitly focused languages put you through. Just having a REPL loop like IRB is great for very quickly trying things out.

That being said, Ruby is not good at any heavy computation. I don't care which version of Ruby it is, it's still slow for any heavy number crunching, so if you're going to be working with heavy datasets, it's best to pick your battles. As you've said you're just getting into programming, I would - rather than worry about if Ruby is the right language for you - just pick it up and learn with it. Certainly we aren't tied down to just using the bike on which we first learn to ride, and the same goes for languages.

If you have some *NIX / programming experience, I've heard great things about http://github.com/edgecase/ruby_koans

If you like to buy books, http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177 is the best and only Ruby book I'll bother owning. I have a short attention span (except when writing comments, apparently) and have found all other resources laud on and on about how great Ruby is, rather than tell you anything about it. Otherwise, they read like a dictionary. Not useful for me.

You've probably had it recommended, but if you like cartoon foxes, bacon, and a lot of comedic nonsense in your learning, check out http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/ - it's a quite fun way to get exposure to the language!

Ultimately the first steps are the hardest - and the best way to move forward is to set a goal. Perhaps write a program that takes a number n, and tells you what the _n_th prime number is. Certainly not the most exciting program, but something that can be improved on, etc etc.

It's been too long since i read Programming Perl but "The Ruby Programming Language" is the book that i use the most.

While the Pickaxe is good, you can't beat the pedigree of "The Ruby Programming Language" what with Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz aka The guy who created the ruby programming language in the first place, co-writing the book along with Mr.Flanahan.

Amazon_Link

10000 limit again. Reserving this comment for the Programming section:

PROGRAMMING
Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers
Beginning Python
The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)
Shell Scripting
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible, Second Edition
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
sed & awk (2nd Edition)
The Ruby Programming Language
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example
Agile Web Development with Rails
Automating Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows PowerShell 2.0
Pragmatic Guide to Subversion
Programming Perl
C++ Primer Plus
The AWK Programming Language thanks sjhill
Modern Perl thanks three18ti
High-Order Perl thanks three18ti
The Art of Scalability thanks mr_chip
Scalability Rules thanks mr_chip
Continuous Delivery thanks mr_chip
The Varnish Book thanks mr_chip

"The whole OOP side" is the most important thing for understanding how Rails works. I mean, apart from the object hierarchy, there's nothing to it. Rails is a framework, and you use it just like any other collection of objects.

I am inferring from your reading that you think of OOP as something hard to learn. It's not! It's really simple, though if you're brand new to all of this it may seem like information overload. But really, it's nothing compared to learning Rails.

If you're new to web development, learning Rails is going to be hard. There's a lot to it. In order to really understand Rails you have to understand HTML, CSS, templates and dynamic HTML, probably JavaScript, database access which means probably SQL as well, and any number of other things. The difference between a client and a server. It's not easy.

But that doesn't mean you can't learn it. Hell, every web developer today has been in the situation of feeling overloaded by all the different pieces, and they all got through it. So can you.

But it might be a lot to tackle if you're new to programming (by which I mean you've been coding regularly for less than six months). One thing at a time might be best to prevent burnout.

If you want to learn Ruby, what follows is the sort of advice that everyone gives and everyone ignores, but I'm posting it anyway because I really believe that it's the best thing you can do (it's what I wish I did when I was learning how to program):

Read The Ruby Programming Langage.

It's short.

It's co-written by matz, the creator of Ruby.

It describes everything in the language.

Read it once straight through. Expect to understand about 20% of it. That's okay. There's a lot of stuff like unicode support details that you really don't care about. That's okay too. Skim that. The point is that, after reading it, you will know everything in the language. There will be nothing that you've never heard of.

You probably won't understand the difference between a block and a lambda and a proc after one reading, but you'll know that there are things called blocks/lambdas/procs and they're similar but subtly different and later on when you encounter them in the wild you won't be surprised at their behavior. You'll be able to say "Hey, I know that thing. That's a block." And then you'll be able to google "ruby blocks" and find out more.

Once you've read it, you will have no unknown unknowns. You can go out and code away for a few months, maybe work all the way through Learn Ruby the Hard Way, and later on come back and re-read. This time you'll understand 90-100% of it.

Intimate familiarity with your language of choice is important if you're in this for the long haul.

Edit: I realized that I didn't really answer your question directly: you should learn all of Ruby. It is not as hard as it sounds. Now, you shouldn't necessarily learn all of Ruby and then start learning Rails. You'll be learning a lot of Ruby as you go along, and before too long you'll stop running into new concepts. But never stop improving your Ruby knowledge until you've learned everything there is to know. You'll never know "enough" Ruby until you know it all.

I've read both the "Pickaxe" book and "The Ruby Programming Language" (co-authored by Matz and _why), and I have to say TRPL is much better.

It's a no-BS book about every single Ruby detail. Covers all the quirks and features I didn't even know existed. I definitely owe my knowledge of Ruby directly to it, but my introduction to the Pickaxe (only (free) book at the time). Pickaxe may be good to start with, but you can learn the same from TRPL and TRPL provides a much better reference later on.

That was not very comprehensive, you didn't even touch the surface about arrays in Ruby.

I suggest you get a book like The Ruby Programming Language or at least read the rdoc for the Array class (ri 'Array').

ri is your friend, use it.

If you're looking for a straight reference book on Ruby and you know how to program, I find that "The Ruby Programming Language" is better than the pickaxe, but it all comes down to personal preference. Both are excellent books.
http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289253722&sr=8-1

These two are the most recommend for beginners

The Ruby Programming Language

Agile Web Development with Rails


More advanced topics:

Metaprogramming Ruby

The Rspec Book

I initially learned Rails back in the day through a previous edition of this book, and found it a decent introduction. If you're already fluent in web programming and backend it may be a bit simplistic for your tastes, but it's a good introduction to "the Rails way" of doing things.

If you really want a deep dive on the Ruby language itself, far beyond what you'll need to get started on Rails apps, but what every mature developer should take the time to learn, David Flanagan's The Ruby Programming Language is a must-read.

By the way: don't knock the book until you try it. I think we've all had a bad experience with crappy, overpriced college textbooks, but professional reference books are a completely different story. It'll take less time than you think to make it cover-to-cover, and the organized, thorough presentation of a decent book ensures you'll come away with a complete understanding of the language that may even impress an interviewer when you're trying to get a job.

http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177

this book is coauthored by the Matz - the creator of Ruby. its a really top notch book.

> Which of the three will give the best chance to telecommute?

From my experience, as a general rule, I have found that anything related to web development is especially suited for telecommuting, so your choice would be Ruby on Rails. You can telecommute with roles like Sharepoint developers, DBA, sysadmin, but my impression is that most of these roles are in traditional big companies and they may not always be open to 100% telecommuting.

But be aware that by choosing a field that doesn't require your presence on-site, you're competing with developers from developing countries who will be able to outbid you.

> Which of the three is the least challenging to be learned on your own (and if you have any good learning resources you can recommend, I'll take them all, thanks)?

I think all are equally challenging if your aim is to be really good in that field and difficulty is a subjective notion anyway.

As for resources: when I was dabbling in Ruby on Rails a few years ago, I found this tutorial very useful: Ruby on Rails Tutorial

You also need a good understanding of the Ruby programming language. I recommend Programming Ruby, though I liked The Ruby Programming Language because it was a lot more concise (if dated). You can ask /r/ruby for more suggestions.

Not really a tutorial, but I found The Ruby Programming Language by Flanagan and Matz to be a really fantastic introduction to Ruby for experienced programmers.