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Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Ruby is perhaps best known as the engine powering the hugely popular Ruby on Rails web framework. However, it is an extremely powerful and versatile programming language in its own right. It focuses on simplicity and offers a fully object-oriented environment.
Beginning Ruby is a thoroughly contemporary guide for every type of reader who wants to learn Ruby, from novice programmers to web developers to Ruby newcomers. It starts by explaining the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters builds toward creating a genuine Ruby application.
The book then explains key Ruby principles, such as classes and objects, projects, modules, and libraries, and other aspects of Ruby such as database access. In addition, Ruby on Rails is covered in depth, and the books appendixes provide essential reference information as well as a primer for experienced programmers.
What you'll learn Understand the basics of Ruby and object-oriented building blocks. Work with Ruby libraries, gems, and documentation. Work with files and databases. Write and deploy Ruby applications. Explore Ruby web frameworks and aspects of network programming with Ruby. Develop desktop and GUI applications with Ruby. Who this book is for Beginning programmers, programmers new to Ruby, and web developers interested in knowing the foundations of the language.
Beginning Ruby is a thoroughly contemporary guide for every type of reader who wants to learn Ruby, from novice programmers to web developers to Ruby newcomers. It starts by explaining the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters builds toward creating a genuine Ruby application.
The book then explains key Ruby principles, such as classes and objects, projects, modules, and libraries, and other aspects of Ruby such as database access. In addition, Ruby on Rails is covered in depth, and the books appendixes provide essential reference information as well as a primer for experienced programmers.
What you'll learn Understand the basics of Ruby and object-oriented building blocks. Work with Ruby libraries, gems, and documentation. Work with files and databases. Write and deploy Ruby applications. Explore Ruby web frameworks and aspects of network programming with Ruby. Develop desktop and GUI applications with Ruby. Who this book is for Beginning programmers, programmers new to Ruby, and web developers interested in knowing the foundations of the language.
664 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
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April 14, 2010"Beginning Ruby" by Peter Cooper is not the best book on earth, but it's good enough for whoever wants to learn about Ruby. The author claims that his book will be easy to digest even if you're a complete stranger to computer programming. I beg it is not so. I think you still need a little computer programming knowledge elsewhere to fully enjoy "Beginning Ruby."
I'm only on page 212 so far, and so my opinion maybe imperfect, but then again all opinions should be so. I recommend you to read "Beginning Ruby," because I'm myself enjoy reading it. I cannot say that I will become an expert in Ruby by finishing reading this book, but I have to say this book helps me understand Ruby a lot more than ever before. For examples, how to use symbols, hash, array, class, module, libraries, irb, catch and throw, and so on. I'm pretty sure all programming languages have similar ways of doing things, and so Ruby. Many other languages like to emphasize on doing the right way with few approaches, but Ruby likes to take many roads that led to Rome. "Beginning Ruby" also has many good concise examples for you to try out so Ruby will stick with you a lot longer. There are projects that are available for you to follow so you can get a feel of coding a real project.
Last note: If you're a programmer, you probably know what I'm trying to say -- Ruby is a language that everything is an object. Ruby is a very high level language that it's safe to say -- Ruby is more real in a sense of being an object oriented language than any language that claimed to be so.
I'm only on page 212 so far, and so my opinion maybe imperfect, but then again all opinions should be so. I recommend you to read "Beginning Ruby," because I'm myself enjoy reading it. I cannot say that I will become an expert in Ruby by finishing reading this book, but I have to say this book helps me understand Ruby a lot more than ever before. For examples, how to use symbols, hash, array, class, module, libraries, irb, catch and throw, and so on. I'm pretty sure all programming languages have similar ways of doing things, and so Ruby. Many other languages like to emphasize on doing the right way with few approaches, but Ruby likes to take many roads that led to Rome. "Beginning Ruby" also has many good concise examples for you to try out so Ruby will stick with you a lot longer. There are projects that are available for you to follow so you can get a feel of coding a real project.
Last note: If you're a programmer, you probably know what I'm trying to say -- Ruby is a language that everything is an object. Ruby is a very high level language that it's safe to say -- Ruby is more real in a sense of being an object oriented language than any language that claimed to be so.
November 24, 2013
This is a tough one. Its a book that is clear and basic, a text for - as the title makes clear - novices... as long as the novices have some other programming exposure, and can deal with the firehose of information. The book oftentimes errs on the side of provide the Complete Information on a topic, along with All The Context - admirable, but for beginners, its just too much. We've been using it alongside Chris Pine's Learning To Program, which may be magnifying its issues.
That said, its a very comprehensive book, with a solid structure and organization to the information presented.. it just sometimes seems to either not know who its been written for (utter novices or programmers who are simply novice at Ruby), or not aware that sometimes when teaching, its ok to only give the student a subset of information about the topic.
3 stars if you're an utter novice
4 stars if you have previous programming language experience
That said, its a very comprehensive book, with a solid structure and organization to the information presented.. it just sometimes seems to either not know who its been written for (utter novices or programmers who are simply novice at Ruby), or not aware that sometimes when teaching, its ok to only give the student a subset of information about the topic.
3 stars if you're an utter novice
4 stars if you have previous programming language experience
December 24, 2011
Excellent primer for the Ruby programming language, designed to quickly turn a total beginner into an intermediate Ruby programmer. It feels a little dumbed down at places, but it belabors nothing. This book isn't designed to be a thorough treatment of Ruby, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in breadth.
August 3, 2018
Coming from a Java background, I found this book particularly helpful in learning Ruby's basic syntax and features. Despite the book's subtitle, it won't make you a "professional" by any means, but it does provide you with all the essentials to make the next step.
November 19, 2017
Reread several times
February 2, 2018
Covers a lot of ground with out getting into a lot of details.
June 9, 2016
Believe it or not, Ruby is 21 years old and one of the hottest programming languages out there. Not only because of its features, but also because it has a quite vibrant and active community supporting it. This resulted in many projects being developed in Ruby: Redmine, Puppet… Learning Ruby, even if just the basics (you don’t want to write Puppet Facts in Python, do you?), is becoming an essential skill required in the power-tools belt of any developer or DevOps out there. This popularity is reflected by a lot of documentation available. We curious people also have quite a rich selection of titles to pick from in case we prefer a book. Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional is an introductiory text that is meant to get anyone started with the language and its core features.
Released back in 2009, this second version covers Ruby 1.9, which is now kinda outdated. It is meant to teach beginners the basics of the language, so that most of the concepts, which include the core data types and object oriented programming, are still valid and valuable.
It is quite a big book, which could be roughly split into three parts: the first focuses on the Ruby philosophy and history. The reader is introduced to the basic concepts of OOP and their role in Ruby. We are also shown how to install Ruby and how get started with the interactive terminal. No word is said about RVM, though, which is now the de facto Ruby version management system. The second part of the book dives, instead, into the core of the language: everything is an object, so do expect classes, inheritance, encapsulation and all that comes with it. The basic data types are also presented and used through Hello World! like examples. Finally, the last part of this title is dedicated to more “advanced” topics, such as Ruby on Rails and distributing gems. Here the author gives the readers a quick taste of what Ruby can do, without really going deep into any of those subjects.
While the topics chosen by the author are pretty much appropriated for an introductory text, the book is, overall, hard to read and, mostly follow. The concepts are explained in a very sparse way, which doesn’t really help someone new to get the big picture. As an example, when the author discusses encapsulation, it first introduces the public and private access modifiers then, later on, in a different paragraph, comes out with ah by the way, there is a third way to hide data to the outside. I must admit that, if I did not know OOP already, I would have been lost. Another thing that definitely caught my attention was the chapter discussing projects and how Ruby searches through different paths for modules. Very little is shown and no real module is created and/or distributed. While not being a Rubyst myself, I severely doubt manually pushing entries into the PATHs array is the way to go.
Throughout the whole book, the examples are way too short and easy. While it is true that this is a book for beginners, they never go beyond the Hello World!‘s complexity. The reader never sees the true capabilities of Ruby in action.
Overall I am not happy with this book. This is the very first Ruby book I read so that I don’t have anything to compare it with. Still, I think this is not the right choice to get started, not only because it is very outdated, but also because it doesn’t take the reader hand by hand. The information is not complete and the reader is abruptly moved from concept to concept.
As usual, you can find more reviews on my personal blog: books.lostinmalloc.com. Feel free to pass by and share your thoughts!
Released back in 2009, this second version covers Ruby 1.9, which is now kinda outdated. It is meant to teach beginners the basics of the language, so that most of the concepts, which include the core data types and object oriented programming, are still valid and valuable.
It is quite a big book, which could be roughly split into three parts: the first focuses on the Ruby philosophy and history. The reader is introduced to the basic concepts of OOP and their role in Ruby. We are also shown how to install Ruby and how get started with the interactive terminal. No word is said about RVM, though, which is now the de facto Ruby version management system. The second part of the book dives, instead, into the core of the language: everything is an object, so do expect classes, inheritance, encapsulation and all that comes with it. The basic data types are also presented and used through Hello World! like examples. Finally, the last part of this title is dedicated to more “advanced” topics, such as Ruby on Rails and distributing gems. Here the author gives the readers a quick taste of what Ruby can do, without really going deep into any of those subjects.
While the topics chosen by the author are pretty much appropriated for an introductory text, the book is, overall, hard to read and, mostly follow. The concepts are explained in a very sparse way, which doesn’t really help someone new to get the big picture. As an example, when the author discusses encapsulation, it first introduces the public and private access modifiers then, later on, in a different paragraph, comes out with ah by the way, there is a third way to hide data to the outside. I must admit that, if I did not know OOP already, I would have been lost. Another thing that definitely caught my attention was the chapter discussing projects and how Ruby searches through different paths for modules. Very little is shown and no real module is created and/or distributed. While not being a Rubyst myself, I severely doubt manually pushing entries into the PATHs array is the way to go.
Throughout the whole book, the examples are way too short and easy. While it is true that this is a book for beginners, they never go beyond the Hello World!‘s complexity. The reader never sees the true capabilities of Ruby in action.
Overall I am not happy with this book. This is the very first Ruby book I read so that I don’t have anything to compare it with. Still, I think this is not the right choice to get started, not only because it is very outdated, but also because it doesn’t take the reader hand by hand. The information is not complete and the reader is abruptly moved from concept to concept.
As usual, you can find more reviews on my personal blog: books.lostinmalloc.com. Feel free to pass by and share your thoughts!
October 31, 2012
Recently I decided to learn Ruby on Rails (RoR), and even though I’ve been assured repeatedly that I don’t need to know that much of Ruby proper before I start dabbling with RoR (of course, I do have some prior programming/web development experience), I quickly decided that I would still want to know as much about Ruby in its own right as possible. After looking into several books on Ruby, I decided to give “Beginning Ruby” a try, largely based on the positive Amazon recommendations. I am glad I did, but this may not be the most pedagogical book that I could have gone through.
The book is very well written, with many examples and lots of code. You can either type the code examples directly, or, preferably, download them form the accompanying website. The downloaded code, however, is not very clearly labeled and you end up opening several files before you stumble across the right one. The book also provides many resources and links for further reference.
One thing that I definitely didn’t like about this book is the lack of exercises. I am still the old school like that: I like to be given a specific problem to work on in order to master any material. Yes, this book seems to be largely geared towards the experienced programmers who want to learn the Ruby way of doing things, and the simpler exercises would probably be waste of time for them. However, I think even they would appreciate being able to work on a concrete problem with the solutions (or at least an outline of a solution) provided at the end of the book or online. On the other hand if you are truly new to programming, this book will definitely be the best resource for your needs.
Overall, this is a good reference book that would need some major revisions in order to become an acceptable textbook on Ruby. If you want to quickly learn Ruby syntax you may find it useful, but if you are new to programming you should look somewhere else.
The book is very well written, with many examples and lots of code. You can either type the code examples directly, or, preferably, download them form the accompanying website. The downloaded code, however, is not very clearly labeled and you end up opening several files before you stumble across the right one. The book also provides many resources and links for further reference.
One thing that I definitely didn’t like about this book is the lack of exercises. I am still the old school like that: I like to be given a specific problem to work on in order to master any material. Yes, this book seems to be largely geared towards the experienced programmers who want to learn the Ruby way of doing things, and the simpler exercises would probably be waste of time for them. However, I think even they would appreciate being able to work on a concrete problem with the solutions (or at least an outline of a solution) provided at the end of the book or online. On the other hand if you are truly new to programming, this book will definitely be the best resource for your needs.
Overall, this is a good reference book that would need some major revisions in order to become an acceptable textbook on Ruby. If you want to quickly learn Ruby syntax you may find it useful, but if you are new to programming you should look somewhere else.
June 4, 2012
I'm nearly through this book, reading it cover-to-cover. And I'm going to continue referencing this book long into my Ruby experience. I've never read a better programming-language tutorial or reference book. The author explains everything clearly, concisely and in exactly the manner necessary for a novice (such as myself) to immediately grasp and start using the information. Brilliant.
October 7, 2014
I decided to give this book only 3 stars. It is partly the book, but it is also the language. After reading this book, I did not really favor Ruby as a language of choice. I think I'll just keep to Python, Java, and C. Overall, the book was OK, but it was very different from most other programming books I have read, introducing object orientation towards the very beginning (ie: 1.+(5))
August 24, 2007
Thorough coverage of the Ruby language in a slow, easy way. Good for beginning programmers, and also has a quick summary in the appendix for more seasoned developers to get a quick start.Has large chapter on Rails as well.
November 1, 2012
Great intro text on the ruby language, not necessarily the ruby on rails web framework. Much better to start from here before diving into other topics... good emphasis on understanding what's going on under the covers of the language features.
March 19, 2016
Good book for Ruby beginners
June 5, 2013
Though there is a tutorial aspect to this, it's not a 'learn by doing' text. It's more like a traditional text book in this regard--which is pretty great on my end.
October 28, 2015
Currently out of date and it shows. Decent reference to own.
August 21, 2014
Great book that goes through the foundations of programming, specifically in Ruby. Most concepts and examples are presented really clearly. Great choice is you want to learn to program.
December 23, 2019
It's ok to understand the basis
July 12, 2009
Great introduction
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews