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The Book of Ruby: A Hands-On Guide for the Adventurous
Ruby is famous for being easy to learn, but most users only scratch the surface of what it can do. While other books focus on Ruby's trendier features, The Book of Ruby reveals the secret inner workings of one of the world's most popular programming languages, teaching you to write clear, maintainable code.You'll start with the basics—types, data structures, and control flows—and progress to advanced features like blocks, mixins, metaclasses, and beyond. Rather than bog you down with a lot of theory, The Book of Ruby takes a hands-on approach and focuses on making you productive from day one.As you follow along, you’ll learn –Leverage Ruby's succinct and flexible syntax to maximize your productivity–Balance Ruby's functional, imperative, and object-oriented features–Write self-modifying programs using dynamic programming techniques–Create new fibers and threads to manage independent processes concurrently–Catch and recover from execution errors with robust exception handling–Develop powerful web applications with the Ruby on Rails frameworkEach chapter includes a "Digging Deeper" section that shows you how Ruby works under the hood, so you'll never be caught off guard by its deceptively simple scoping, multithreading features, or precedence rules.Whether you're new to programming or just new Ruby, The Book of Ruby is your guide to rapid, real-world software development with this unique and elegant language.
629 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 30, 2011
14 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Huw Collingbourne
28 books22 followersHuw Collingbourne is a writer, programming instructor and software developer. He is the author of a number of fiction and factual books. His novels include the Kill Job series (gritty 1960s Cold War and crime) The Exodus Plague post-apocalyptic thrillers and The 1980s Murder Mysteries (crime capers).
In the 1980s Huw was a pop music journalist and he interviewed many of the 'New Romantic' stars such as Boy George, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Depeche Mode. In the 1990s he published the 'adult humour' magazine, 18 Rated, which was immediately banned by all leading UK newsagents (who obviously failed to see the joke).
Huw's programming books including The Little Book Of C, The Little Book Of Pointers, The Little Book of Recursion, The Little Book Of C#, The Little Book Of Ruby and The Book Of Ruby. He has programmed in a broad range of languages since the early 1980s. He has written programming and technical columns for numerous computer magazines in the UK including PC Plus, PC Pro and Computer Shopper. He is author of the cult adventure game, The Golden Wombat Of Destiny.
Huw has, at various times, been a magazine editor, publisher and TV presenter. He has an MA in English and a 2nd dan black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido - the latter skill useful when attempting to control his huge, hairy and amazingly strong Pyrenean Mountain Dogs.
In the 1980s Huw was a pop music journalist and he interviewed many of the 'New Romantic' stars such as Boy George, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Depeche Mode. In the 1990s he published the 'adult humour' magazine, 18 Rated, which was immediately banned by all leading UK newsagents (who obviously failed to see the joke).
Huw's programming books including The Little Book Of C, The Little Book Of Pointers, The Little Book of Recursion, The Little Book Of C#, The Little Book Of Ruby and The Book Of Ruby. He has programmed in a broad range of languages since the early 1980s. He has written programming and technical columns for numerous computer magazines in the UK including PC Plus, PC Pro and Computer Shopper. He is author of the cult adventure game, The Golden Wombat Of Destiny.
Huw has, at various times, been a magazine editor, publisher and TV presenter. He has an MA in English and a 2nd dan black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido - the latter skill useful when attempting to control his huge, hairy and amazingly strong Pyrenean Mountain Dogs.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 31, 2015
This book is a pretty good introduction to Ruby. If you're looking to learn the basics of the Ruby language, this is a good place to start.
There's only one chapter about Rails, though, and it doesn't cover much, so don't expect to learn Rails from this book.
The one nitpick I have with the book is that the sample code doesn't quite follow normal Ruby coding conventions. The code files use tabs instead of spaces, and the indentation isn't always consistent. Thee are a few other inconsistencies with it that are a bit of a nuisance, but don't really get in the way of understanding and executing the code.
The book was last updated for Ruby 1.9, and there are a lot of notes on differences between 1.8 and 1.9. Most of the 1.9 code still runs perfectly well in 2.x, though, and I don't think there are any serious breaking changes between 1.9 and the current version of Ruby (2.2).
There's only one chapter about Rails, though, and it doesn't cover much, so don't expect to learn Rails from this book.
The one nitpick I have with the book is that the sample code doesn't quite follow normal Ruby coding conventions. The code files use tabs instead of spaces, and the indentation isn't always consistent. Thee are a few other inconsistencies with it that are a bit of a nuisance, but don't really get in the way of understanding and executing the code.
The book was last updated for Ruby 1.9, and there are a lot of notes on differences between 1.8 and 1.9. Most of the 1.9 code still runs perfectly well in 2.x, though, and I don't think there are any serious breaking changes between 1.9 and the current version of Ruby (2.2).
August 19, 2017
Brilliant book to begin with Ruby. Each chapter is well distributed and contents are pretty deep to learn beginners the basics of Ruby.
Each chapter includes a "Digging Deeper" section that shows you how Ruby works under the hood, so you'll never be caught off guard by its deceptively simple scoping, multi threading features, or precedence rules.
Whether you're new to programming or just new Ruby, The Book of Ruby is your guide to rapid, real-world software development with this unique and elegant language.
Each chapter includes a "Digging Deeper" section that shows you how Ruby works under the hood, so you'll never be caught off guard by its deceptively simple scoping, multi threading features, or precedence rules.
Whether you're new to programming or just new Ruby, The Book of Ruby is your guide to rapid, real-world software development with this unique and elegant language.
July 30, 2025
It's *very* dated and not so clearly structured. The book doesn't contain any glaring issues except author's liberal usage of "evals" and weird code layout (wouldn't pass Ruby Style Guide 25').
Wouldn't advise anyone to take it up for anything other than a sentimental and nostalgic reason. Have read it myself in 2025 just to look back at my first Ruby book (read in 2012) from a standpoint of 13+ years of Ruby development.
Wouldn't advise anyone to take it up for anything other than a sentimental and nostalgic reason. Have read it myself in 2025 just to look back at my first Ruby book (read in 2012) from a standpoint of 13+ years of Ruby development.
June 12, 2019
After reading this book, I have chosen Phyton
November 14, 2015
This book is a good introduction to ruby and how ruby does object orientation. I found the early examples in the book interesting (to the point I wanted to grow them further). It also introduces you to some of the Computer Science meta language, which sets you for a greater degree of success when talking to other developers/engineers.
This book was created at a time of Ruby 1.8 to 1.9 and is due for a refresh.
This book was created at a time of Ruby 1.8 to 1.9 and is due for a refresh.
August 7, 2011
Not a bad beginner's intro to Ruby, especially for people who have no plans to use Ruby moving forward. Non-idiomatic code use and formatting were a bit distracting, but probably not an issue for the merely curious.
February 17, 2014
This was a decent book, but there were errors and I think that this may not have been the best book for a beginner. I got a good overview of the language, though, and I plan to reread it once I learn more. I will probably rate it again at that point.
August 9, 2016
The first Ruby book I bought was "The Book of Ruby". Pretty good introduction to Ruby language and a little bit of Ruby on Rails. Loved the "digging dipper" sections, not the best of Ruby but a good one.
September 3, 2012
It's a very complete book, it explain you the basics of ruby and teach you the difference between the 1.8 and 1.9 version. It's a very good book to start with ruby.
July 28, 2013
Basic, interesting, direct, with some tricky tips between chapters.
Great book, you can skip digging deeper but could be useful.
Great book, you can skip digging deeper but could be useful.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews