Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

If you are already a programmer and want to learn Ruby or even if you already know Ruby, this is the right book.

Clear and concise language. I just couldn't stop reading it.

Clear explanation with examples every time. It goes straight to the point. It's at the same time a reference, a tutorial and an exercise book.

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

I've bought this book when it first came out and recommended to everyone who was asking for literature about ruby.

It is very well written and answers almost all questions. What I especially like about is that it doesn't start with yet another tutorial or too much conversational text without real information on the topic itself.

It contains what the cover says, nothing more. It is straight forward and a pleasure to read. As easy as it sounds, this is something you can rarely find in technical books and this is what makes this book exceptional I think.

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

Regardless of whether you're a fan of Ruby, The Ruby Programming Language is one of the finest pieces of technical writing that I have ever laid eyes on. The book is extremely well organized, and details every nook and cranny of the language.

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

This book does for Ruby what Kernighan & Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" did for C. It provides a concise, accessible introduction to the Ruby programming language.

Starting out with a tour of Ruby, you are then taken on a deeper dive into chapters on "Structure and Execution", "Datatypes and Objects", "Expressions and Operators", and "Statements and Control Structures". Some of the real power of Ruby is revealed in chapters on "Methods, Procs, Lambdas, and Closures", "Classes and Modules", and "Reflection and Metaprogramming".

The book closes with chapters on "The Ruby Platform" and "The Ruby Environment". The chapter on the Ruby Platform is like a condensed API guide to Ruby's core library. The chapter on the Ruby Environment will help you navigate through the Ruby interpreter's command-line arguments and environment variables as well as a grab-bag of extra Ruby topics that were not covered earlier in the book.

The book is well organized and easy to read. Each chapter is peppered with code samples. If you are serious about learning Ruby, get this book! It sits on my bookshelf, next to a copy of the Pickaxe book and The Ruby Way. Bonus: each chapter of the book starts with a work of art by why the lucky stiff!

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

What has changed in the pdfs recently? I have the same problem with the Shortcuts edition on PyParsing which I bought today, but don't have the problem with the pdf of the Ruby Cookbook, which I bought around the time of its release in mid-2006, nor any of the other pdfs I have bought from O'Reilly (Rails Cookbook, Designing Web Navigation, etc...).

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

Like the book says in the beginning: "Ruby is not a simple language... and this book is not a simple book. It is intended for experienced programmers... and are willing to read carefully and thoughtfully to achieve this goal."

Ruby is still relatively new, so there are not a ton of books from which to choose. But you gotta figure that one by the creator of the language (Y. Matsumoto) and the author of the popular "Java in a Nutshell" (D. Flanagan) is bound to be good - and it is.

It's a simple, no-nonsense text that will answer just about any question you might have about the Ruby programming language. This and the more-conversational-in-tone "The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton make for an unbeatable pair.

Comments about oreilly The Ruby Programming Language:

Trying to read the PDF with Preview on Mac OS X is almost impossible. In particular, the code examples come out severely messed up bold.

It's incredibly distracting and unfortunately, as O'Reilly does suggest, viewing the PDF with Adobe Reader works fine.

SO yes, before you buy this as a PDF, understand you're going to need to view with Adobe Reader...............