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New FREE Ruby e-book
humblelittlerubybook.com — I've released my Ruby e-book for free now. Link goes to page with HTML and 150ish page PDF versions. Please note there are Google ads, so use AdBlock if you don't want to see them (downloads have been eating up 3-4GB of bandwidth a day and I need to pay for it). Enjoy and please buy a print copy! ;)
jeremymcanally- 1500 diggs
- digg it
- bluemonki, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4This is in a _very_ similar style to Why's (Poignent) Guide to Ruby http://poignantguide.net/ruby/
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You mean as in "plagiarism"?
The only thing I noticed in common is the sense of humor, but I am not sure I would call that plagiarism, especially with the long tradition on both Python and Ruby books to have a touch of humor.
To the author: great job!! - mrfanboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's light-hearted yes, but where are the foxes?
I personally find it has much more in common with Chris Pine (Who has written a more basic Ruby book called "Learning to Program") in terms of style.
I'm glad, makes reading them much more enjoyable than the grind-fests of other programming languages, long may it continue! - bazmail, on 11/08/2007, -0/+6most programming books covering the same topic are "_very_" similar in style.
they're computer books. not autobiographys. - bluemonki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@rodrigo74: You mean as in "plagiarism"?
Ummm good question. He's kind of plagiarised the idea of Why's Poignant Guide. Which is bad because Why's guide is fantastic but not really that well known and it seems wrong to have someone do something kind of the same and get more credit for it.
I'm not sure I've really explained myself there but I'm sure you get the jist....
@bazmail: sure the content is going to be similar (well you'd hope wouldn't you) but the presentation is also very similar. - rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I haven't seen anything in this book that would characterize it as plagiarism of Why's. Maybe you could point us something out to be more precise on your claim.
And besides that, I believe that Why's Poignant Guide does get a lot of credit, it is very popular (just search for it here on Digg, for a start, and check for yourself). Personally I think it's not a very good starting point for anyone trying to learn Ruby, but it is very funny indeed. - bluemonki, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Ok ok, so I certainly don't mean plagiarise. But you have to accept that the two "books" have a lot in common.
Maybe it's a trend, it would be nice to read more books and manuals that were written in this unusual and amusing style :) - adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I couldn't get through the poignant book. It seemed like a fanboy's evangelist guide with really bad humor. I hope that this one fits me better.
- amikael9999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very good one - when it's FREE!!!
Here are more FREE Ruby books:
http://freecomputerbooks.com/langRubyBooksIndex.html
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You mean as in "plagiarism"?
- ketsugi, on 11/08/2007, -0/+20I like how he gives a thumbs-up to AdBlock to avoid seeing the ads on his site. Just for that I'm switching AdBlock off and clicking a few of those.
- Dmitrik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I actually did the same, but with NoScript :-)
- urho, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Same here...
- PlanarPurple, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2If he really wants to give it away for free, advertising is not the most efficient way to achieve this; BitTorrent is. Cheers, Rudi
- Dmitrik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Since it's only about 2.5 MB, it's pretty pointless to use BitTorrent to download it...
Maybe use a free hosting service, but these are pretty slow and have frustrating full-of-ads interfaces.
If you like the book - you can buy a print copy. Not much of advertising, and you get the book too. - maseone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, bit torrent would be great in this case.
He could also switch over to dreamhost for hosting. 3-4 gb per day would be covered quite well over there for a very small monthly fee.
- Dmitrik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Since it's only about 2.5 MB, it's pretty pointless to use BitTorrent to download it...
- dewiniaeth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Nice to see another online Ruby book.
- edwardchoi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Good job, i'll dig it.
- estacado, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1mirror?
- mercurysquad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well if bandwidth is a big problem, why not upload it to some free hosting provider?
Anyway... I did that, whoever wants the book but wishes to save the guy some bandwidth bills, get it from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cnk5wrnkwra- maseone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1though you mean well, i'm sure he's not going to appreciate the dilution to his download stats.
- Stealer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1please, put clickable links in the index !!!! and throughout the book will be usefull too ....
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah it would be nice to have prev-next links on each page in the html version too. But these are small gripes, the book seems to be very well written, will read it sometime.
- arudgick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1an excellent resource. i've already purchased the ebook and it's come in handy on many an occassion! kudos.
- csrster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Looks good. The world needs more free Ruby books.
- Boworr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've only read the opening chapter and I'm already laughing out loud in the office. Now *this* is how I think all documentation and howto's should be written. Take out the jargon and marketing crap and just boil it down to something real people can understand. There's a good balance of humor, examples, diagrams and educational text to teach anyone a little Ruby.
Bravo! - BRamBo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Looking good ill definitely look into this more, I've downloaded a pdf copy. Also clicked some ads for the good of the author. The books looks like a nice read tho i don't think it would be the best if you're (pretty) new to programming. I have been wanting to start learning ruby a while ago but found myself tided up in other obligations this seems like a good start. Thanks for sharing!
- ma1kel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Great book, excellent writing skills. Fun to read through.
- robuk24, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Liking his reverse psychology about his google adwords. Clever way to get people to notice and click on them.
- danggit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Awesome resource :) thanks for making it available
- eXevalo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't see any ads.. in the HTML version anyway.
Where are they?- eXevalo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not too sure.. Did you try using your eyes?
- eXevalo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1of course i tried using my eyes. wtf do you think?
- argblat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Does anyone remember the web 2.0 site where you learned Ruby (it might have been Perl) by doing lessons right in the browser window ... once you completed one it went to the next fluidly?
I'm sure it was a front page digg, but i can't find it anymore (because digg's search SUCKS)
thanks in advance...- mike42780, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8http://tryruby.hobix.com/ is what I think you are referring to.
- argblat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1mike,
thank you! this IS what i was referring to
- dcab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1great job
- dAbReAkA, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1yay, lines dont end with semi columns..
i'd call that language a bit weird, but huh.. whatever.. - regeya, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm so sick of these. Sure, it's in Ruby, but many of the concepts apply to any scripting language, not just Ruby. When will the Ruby fanboys get it through their heads that their scripting language with training wheels isn't the only scripting language out there? We don't want to have another braindamaged Perl crowd who thinks that regexps are purely the Perl domain.
Just kidding. Nice book, though the borderline-psychotic Ruby e-books may not convince my boss that I'm taking enterprise computing seriously. *wink*
And for those looking for other books: The 1st edition of the Pickaxe book is available online: http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ - rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was about to suggest the author to write a RoR book to complement his excellent Ruby book (after all, most people learning Ruby ATM want to use it with Rails), but then I found out that he wrote one already:
http://www.rubyonrailsbook.com/
Not free, though..- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Regarding this Rails book, I decided to buy it (9 dollars), thinking "what the hell, only 9 bucks, I can learn some RoR and support the guy", but I regret it, the text is bad, and even though the book is posted as "beta", which for any programmer or one who reads the Pragmatic Programmers books it means "feature complete, just eventual bugs to iron out", in this case the book is FAR from finished, whole chapters missing, including the last one which is supposed to most important.
I feel ripped off and I thought I should warn the others, since I was the one promoting the book here in the above message.
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Regarding this Rails book, I decided to buy it (9 dollars), thinking "what the hell, only 9 bucks, I can learn some RoR and support the guy", but I regret it, the text is bad, and even though the book is posted as "beta", which for any programmer or one who reads the Pragmatic Programmers books it means "feature complete, just eventual bugs to iron out", in this case the book is FAR from finished, whole chapters missing, including the last one which is supposed to most important.
- SloppyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agile web development with Ruby on Rails is a good one too.
- sengan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice book that could be further improved by some editing:
Ruby is an object-oriented language, but before you skip this section because you think you know what this is all about because you have used C++ or some other unfortunate excuse for an object-oriented language, then please pause and at least read the following sentence. In Ruby, everything you manipulate will be an object. Everything. Even the results of operations on said objects are objects; this approach differs from C++ or Java where primitive types exist or some statements do not return a value.
versus
In Ruby everything is an object. Contrast this to C++ where integers are primitives, not objects. - dimes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0a .pando to hopefully ease his BW pain, if only just a little.
dimes (disclaimer, I work at pando, but as an admin who likes this ebook, just wanted to help out)
Hrmmm, hadn't realized html is/was always blocked, well here is a link to the .pando
http://cache.pando.com/soapservices/package.pando?id=449CD30FD796A8753544B8FDB328AF171CDF054A&key=28D2BE18411B48CAA5055E71E231B4CB33723D7905AF6ACC96BF2FB02337114C - biter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just by reading the first couple of chapters, I noticed too many errors. It seems that the examples were not checked for accuracy. This book is also poorly written and can confuse beginners. I'll stick to my PickAxe book.
- colmenar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0great book. thanks dude. i'll digg it and will click on the ads for you.
- savister, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0If you want tons of free ebooks with resell rights, this is the best place to visit. Updated daily too. http://www.bugabong.com
- 123zoozle, on 12/17/2007, -0/+0Awesome resource, thanks for sharing it.
http://www.webdesignersindia.net/social-website-de ... - rubywalter, on 01/26/2008, -0/+0Hey guys, here are the links for books on Ruby on Rails.
http://www.share-ebooks.com/web_technologies/ruby_ ...
http://www.share-ebooks.com/programming_languages/ ...
Check it out, you will find many useful free e-books for ruby on rails.
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