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Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 30 Apr 08 10:12 AM
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| Dont like the writing style of many tech authors. so wanted some kind of reference before buying anything. Basic book for a start and defnitely the advanced one if you have any recommendations. |
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 30 Apr 08 4:27 PM
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Nandu,
What is it that you don't like about most tech writers? I find that many books seem to assume one is already an expert on whatever they're writing about, which defeats the purpose of the book.
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 01 May 08 11:21 AM
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Yeah now that i think about it ....most of those were my issues only. It was just that when i finally did a projejct on that and got the nuts and bolts , i realized that the 'beginner' book should have explained things in a slightly different way.
Now a days everything is a trial and errors and google; nothing else. Things like ROR needs some kinda initial support and reast will fall into its place. |
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 01 May 08 12:22 PM
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Originally posted by Nandu
Dont like the writing style of many tech authors. so wanted some kind of reference before buying anything. Basic book for a start and defnitely the advanced one if you have any recommendations. |
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Hi Nandu. To be honest, I don't even own a Ruby book. I keep thinking I should find a good reference book for when I need one, but most of what I've learned has been from just reading stuff online and jumping in. 
Wish I had a good one to recommend. |
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 02 May 08 7:03 AM
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Nandu,
Buying books is becomming a dimminishing effort. Unless it is a pretty specialized market you can now get more information online in form of development sites (MSDN, ODN, SUN, RIM), Community Sites (SLX Developer), Forums and News Groups and the all encompassing Google. I find that Technology generally changes so fast that the books are becomming less relivant. I have not gotten into Ruby myself at this point since there is just so much more technology hinging on the cornerstone technologies I already have in my head (.net/SQL/Mobile/SLX) like Silverlight/ASP.net MVC/Unitity/P&P/Entity Framework/Share Point and Office Development that will definately hold me over untill Net 4.0 comes out. (OMG).
Best bet is generally always the web now adays. However lately if given a choice to go to an onsite training course vs. buying a book I am more driven to the book. The costs for a course are getting to be too high for some of the returns you can expect. Balance this off with your experience level when you making this choice. When you talk 2-3 thousand for the course (more if travel is required), lost opportunity costs (if you have billable clients) and a week course can cost 8 - 10 thousand. It takes alot of hours to make up that loss. I Guess I have deviated a bit ...
- Mark |
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 02 May 08 9:49 AM
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There was actually a great post on codinghorror.com (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001108.html) about programmers and books. Jeff Atwood basically argues that technical books about specific technology (and he's co-authored one) are not the way to go, but rather generalist books on programming are better. Interesting article and I agree, although I did buy "Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008" by Joe Rattz a few months ago and found it to be a great, technology specific book.
I think books have one useful thing that the web doesn't: it can synthesize and organize better than the web. Google is great, but I often find myself looking for the "right" result.
Jeff
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Re: Ryan , can you give me a good book to start on Ruby?
Posted: 02 May 08 3:22 PM
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Here's a classic essay on the subject of programming books: http://norvig.com/21-days.html
I'll admit to buying a few books of this type, but my exerience is that unless I have a specific project that I feel pressured to do, I don't get very far.
The books I have found valuable are reference books where you can look up functions or syntax rules of languages you're not very familiar with. I can grab a well written reference book and look something up faster than what it takes to google something and pick the useful sites out of the hits that only casually mention what I'm looking for. |
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