The Well-Grounded Rubyist

by Joe Leo

SummaryThe Well-Grounded Rubyist, Third Edition is a beautifully written tutorial that begins with your first Ruby program and takes you all the way to sophisticated topics like reflection, threading, and recursion. Ruby masters David A. Black and Joe Leo distill their years of knowledge for you, concentrating on the language and its uses so you can use Ruby in any way you choose. Updated for Ruby 2.5.Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.About the TechnologyDesigned for developer productivity, Ruby is an easy-to-learn dynamic language perfect for creating virtually any kind of software. Its famously friendly development community, countless libraries, and amazing tools, like the Rails framework, have established it as the language of choice for high-profile companies, including GitHub, SlideShare, and Shopify. The future is bright for the well-grounded Rubyist!About the BookIn The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Third Edition, expert authors David A. Black and Joseph Leo deliver Ruby mastery in an easy-to-read, casual style. You'll lock in core principles as you write your first Ruby programs. Then, you'll progressively build up to topics like reflection, threading, and recursion, cementing your knowledge with high-value exercises to practice your skills along the way.What's InsideBasic Ruby syntaxRunning Ruby extensionsFP concepts like currying, side-effect-free code, and recursionRuby 2.5 updatesAbout the ReaderFor readers with beginner-level programming skills.About the AuthorsDavid A. Black is an internationally known Ruby developer and author, and a cofounder of Ruby Central. Ruby teacher and advocate Joseph Leo III is the founder of Def Method and lead organizer of the Gotham Ruby Conference. Table of ContentsPART 1 RUBY FOUNDATIONSBootstrapping your Ruby literacyObjects, methods, and local variablesOrganizing objects with classesModules and program organizationThe default object (self), scope, and visibilityControl-flow techniquesPART 2 BUILT-IN CLASSES AND MODULESBuilt-in essentialsStrings, symbols, and other scalar objectsCollection and container objectsCollections Enumerable and EnumeratorRegular expressions and regexp-based string operationsFile and I/O operationsPART 3 RUBY DYNAMICSObject individuationCallable and runnable objectsCallbacks, hooks, and runtime introspectionRuby and functional programming

Genres: Programming

584 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2019

Reviews

[Kerrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Leo’s sections stand out like a sore thumb, and sully what was one of the best programming books I’ve ever read. I recommend reading the first edition instead, and learn the Ruby features newer than 1.9 some other way.

That said, David A. Black’s writing is still the majority of the book, and is still so good that it’s worth four stars. If you can’t get a copy of the first edition, just feel free to skip sections where the writing goes off the rails.

[Anson MacKeracher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not finish this book.

The order of content doesn't make much sense, it's extremely verbose and meandering. There's real joy to be found in programming Ruby, but this book buries that joy under so many useless words and tangents, it did not hold my interest.

If you've never programmed OOP before, this book might be for you. If you're looking for a good grounding in Ruby, and you already have experience with any popular programming language today, probably skip this one.