Black D.A. - The Well-Grounded Rubyist [2009, PDF, ENG]

Summary: review by Eric Grimois
Rating: 5
"The Well-grounded Rubyist" belongs to these still too rare books which deal exclusively and in-depth with Ruby, by leaving Rails, its killer app, on side. David A. Black proposes to give us a strong foundation for the comprehension of the Ruby's mechanisms. On this purpose, he adopts a didactic and original step, by presenting the concepts according to a progressive and well balanced difficulty, not following the "traditional" progression found in other books treating of computer programming languages. Thus, for example, the method lookup strategy is described in chapter 4, even before looking in detail at the test and loop instructions in chapter 6. This order, which can seem curious at first sight, appears finally perfectly logical and natural. This progressive and cumulative approach will however impose to the reader a linear reading of the book to withdraw all the benefit from it.

Focusing himself on the fundamental mechanisms of Ruby, the author only partially cover its built-in classes and modules library, in the second part of the book. After a long description of essential (predefined classes, conversion methods, enumerators etc) he devotes two whole chapters to the extensive Ruby's possibilities about I/O operations and regular expressions.

The three final chapters, which compose the third and last part of the book, treat dynamic aspects of Ruby. What would appear to be the most complex topic of the book is in fact surprisingly easy to assimilate, and one realizes that the efforts of the author to gradually lead us to a sufficient knowledge of Ruby in order to tackle without pain the most difficult subjects, bore its fruits.

This book is intended more particularly for those who discover Ruby, but will be also advantageous to more advanced Ruby developers. Thus, the talent of the author enabled me to completely understand certain of mechanisms I used without mastering them, and which I never had seen exposed anywhere so clearly. The wise advice of the author, lavished throughout the book, to make good use of the exceptional richness of Ruby will also benefit to all readers.

As good as it is, this book presents however some small defects: the author always wanting to make sure you hit the point, some explanations are slightly verbose, and its deliberate choice to not speak about the important differences occurred between Ruby 1.8 and 1.9 may annoy some readers. But these few defects are really minors in regard of the great qualities of this book, and I completely recommend it.

Summary: important read
Rating: 5
If you have any doubts about your Ruby knowledge, then you should read this book. After months of frustration while looking at source code and wasting time with Why's Poignant Guide, I made it a point to read through all pages of the Well-Grounded Rubyist. Once I was done, the difficulty was gone. Now I can read Rails code with ease, all the code makes sense and I feel like I entered a whole new world. David Black guides the reader through the topics he feels are most important. I resisted the temptation to put down the book and start programming, but I am glad I waited. The book is so useful that having finished it, you will be on a new level and your next task will be to learn how Ruby's powerful features can be combined into non-trivial frameworks. If you skip this book, you risk writing mediocre code, at least until you are forced to learn the features and techniques of the language...the hard way.

Summary: The Well-Grounded Rubyist -
Rating: 5
"The Well-Grouded Rubyist" by David A. Black leads readers through the foundations of Ruby programing language to the basics of advanced concepts such as metaprogramming.The book will be very useful for beginner Ruby programmers who, having knowledge of some other programming language, want to learn the basics of Ruby. It gives the taste of the language, presents its strengths and scripting applications. The code examples are simple, comprehensible and very concise, which makes them the excellent illustration to the introduced elements of the language. It is worth noting that "The Well-grounded Rubyist" covers version 1.9.1 of the Ruby language and therefore introduces its novel features.

Summary: Excellent
Rating: 5
I, too, struggled a bit when learning Ruby. I tried the Pick Axe, Programming Ruby, Beginning Ruby, Learning Ruby... I could have saved a ton of money if I'd just had this book first. Excellent. Easy to read, but not dumbed down. I came away with a much deeper understanding of WHY oop is used, and how to use it in ruby.

If you are looking to understand ruby, look no further.

Summary: the best, first book to discover ruby ...
Rating: 5
i've had a tenuous relationship w/ ruby for the past 18 months, which began when a friend sent me the 'pickaxe' and agile rails books over the 2007 holidays. that duo is widely regarded as the de facto introduction to programming with ruby on rails, however, i'd qualify that statement to perhaps only apply to working professionals coming over from another language/framework. i both 1) don't think rails is the best framework for a new ruby coder (sinatra is), and 2) don't think the Pragmatic book is the best introduction to ruby. the well-grounded rubyist didn't exist when i got started, so the first book to pique my interest was the 'beginning ruby' book by peter cooper (apress), and while i was very happy to have found that title over a year ago and having purchased several books and screencasts related to ruby since, the well-grounded rubyist is absolutely the best book to become familiar with ruby at present. the reasoning is consistent w/ my reviews of other books for other programming languages, and is such that there is /NO REPLACEMENT/ for the author being a first-rate educator. a quality instructor is somewhat selfless, always focused on presenting the subject as a first priority, and particularly not how the subject relates to themselves. most programming books are written by practitioners, and since ruby hasn't become particularly available as an option for computer-science students in most programs, there is a very definite void in regard to the number of real teachers writing texts on ruby. i had struggled against my previous experiences coding (asm) and while i learned a lot of the tactics to code in ruby over the past year and half, i never really understood 'why' things worked the way they did. whereas before reading this book i was primarily remixing other people's code, now i'm writing my own code and it feels much more natural. just as "jQuery in action" seemed to open my eyes to the world of javascript, this Manning title has finally opened up the rubiverse and to say that i'm ecstatic really just begins to do this book justice. i can't imagine that you wouldn't find this book the best place to start w/ ruby at this time ...