Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Author(s) : why the lucky stiff
Publication Date : Des 2004
Free License : Attribution-ShareAlike

Review:

OK, this is yet another introductory Ruby programming book, only this one has such an unusual writing style for a programming book. The author can explain why Ruby's so good at one paragraph, and then switches to somehow-personal-yet-technically-related rants in the next paragraph. Mixed to this are these really weird cartoon strip characters, suddenly come out of the blue, poking their panels and 'interfering' the samples code while the author is struggling to explain the basic of Ruby to the dear readers. For one thing, they're not the kind you've seen on those 'For Dummmies' books.

The topics are pretty much basic stuffs, such as variables declaration, data types, array, branching, looping, modules, object oriented programming, debugging, etc. While sometimes it can be hard and annoying to tell the difference between the technical and the ranting parts, I do enjoy reading this book, thanks to those ubiquitous cartoon characters (you've got to see them by yourself!) and the unique teaching style. While the book style may not suit for some people, I still recommend this book for those who want to learn about Ruby the easy and relaxed way.

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