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The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

poignantguide.net

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Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#11

Post by Locke »

JimmyL wrote: post #4

Unusual? Certainly. Best? Not for me. I had some time this past summer and decided that I wanted to experiment a bit with Ruby. I tried Poignant three or four times, and each time I would put it down after half an hour, with the same thought - "Why is this book, widely regarded as the One True Way to learn Ruby, fucking around so much? I don't want foxes and cartoons, I want syntax, rules, conventions, and informatio…

Poignant is fun. That's all.

Probably the best book for really learning Ruby is The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. Hal clearly gets Ruby.

The book is thorough (although possibly a little out of date now), introduces a lot of idiomatic Ruby, and has just the right amount of geeky inside jokes.

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#13

Post by nonrecursive »

jballanc wrote: post #7
JimmyL wrote: post #4

Unusual? Certainly. Best? Not for me. I had some time this past summer and decided that I wanted to experiment a bit with Ruby. I tried Poignant three or four times, and each time I would put it down after half an hour, with the same thought - "Why is this book, widely regarded as the One True Way to learn Ruby, fucking around so much? I don't want foxes and cartoons, I want syntax, rules, conventions, and informatio…

With all due respect, if you had such trouble with Poignant , the you probably also would have had a hard time with Ruby. Not to imply that you couldn't understand Ruby or write in Ruby, but just that Ruby has a very distinct character, a personality almost, and I suspect you and Ruby would not have gotten along. For me, it's that way with Python. Honestly, Python is not fundamentally different from Ruby except this:…

I enjoyed the unrelated sidebars in _why's Poignant Guide, but I don't think I really learned anything useful from it. The pickaxe book was more helpful for me. I've been using ruby for more than 3 years now and I really enjoy it, so I get along with it OK.

To this day I still sometimes think that I should trudge through all of the poignant guide, but then I remember what a tedious time I had and decide not to.

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#14

Post by tdavis »

jballanc wrote: post #7
JimmyL wrote: post #4

Unusual? Certainly. Best? Not for me. I had some time this past summer and decided that I wanted to experiment a bit with Ruby. I tried Poignant three or four times, and each time I would put it down after half an hour, with the same thought - "Why is this book, widely regarded as the One True Way to learn Ruby, fucking around so much? I don't want foxes and cartoons, I want syntax, rules, conventions, and informatio…

With all due respect, if you had such trouble with Poignant , the you probably also would have had a hard time with Ruby. Not to imply that you couldn't understand Ruby or write in Ruby, but just that Ruby has a very distinct character, a personality almost, and I suspect you and Ruby would not have gotten along. For me, it's that way with Python. Honestly, Python is not fundamentally different from Ruby except this:…

Claims like this bother me, whether about Ruby or Python. a programming language is simply that -- a language used to program computers. It doesn't have a personality. It has a distinct syntax, methods, etc. It is the community which gives it a personality, if any.

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#15

Post by jballanc »

holygoat wrote: post #9
jballanc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, if you had such trouble with Poignant , the you probably also would have had a hard time with Ruby. Not to imply that you couldn't understand Ruby or write in Ruby, but just that Ruby has a very distinct character, a personality almost, and I suspect you and Ruby would not have gotten along. For me, it's that way with Python. Honestly, Python is not fundamentally different from Ruby except this:…

I don't believe I agree. Ruby is straightforward; I don't have any trouble at all understanding it. I enjoy _why's cartoons. That doesn't mean that reading _why's cartoons is in any way a good way (for me) to learn Ruby, which is a counterexample to your "probably". Ruby is hardly difficult. (For the sake of anecdotes: I find Python to be stultifyingly simplistic, with a number of negative features, and generally poo…

I didn't mean to imply that Ruby was difficult (though I could see how you might read my reply that way). I merely meant that Ruby embodies a certain philosophy of programming and programming languages, and, while _why is an extreme example, he is still a very accurate embodiment of the Ruby philosophy.

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#16

Post by jballanc »

tdavis wrote: post #14
jballanc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, if you had such trouble with Poignant , the you probably also would have had a hard time with Ruby. Not to imply that you couldn't understand Ruby or write in Ruby, but just that Ruby has a very distinct character, a personality almost, and I suspect you and Ruby would not have gotten along. For me, it's that way with Python. Honestly, Python is not fundamentally different from Ruby except this:…

Claims like this bother me, whether about Ruby or Python. a programming language is simply that -- a language used to program computers. It doesn't have a personality. It has a distinct syntax, methods, etc. It is the community which gives it a personality, if any.

Matz would disagree with you:

"I believe people want to express themselves when they program. They don't want to fight with the language. Programming languages must feel natural to programmers. I tried to make people enjoy programming and concentrate on the fun and creative part of programming when they use Ruby."

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/11/29/ruby.ht...

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#17

Post by sgharms »

I'm a bit surprised this is a top link off of HN, I remember it topping reddit many years ago – hardly hacker “news.”

As I said about this product then, taking 3 tabs of LSD should not be required before reading a “how to program in this language“ book. The cartoons are great, but if they had some bearing on the content e.g.

3.times{ puts 'chunky bacon' }

then I wouldn't feel so much like I was sitting through some performance from the gifted kid class which is sort of boring and semi-insulting: Why yes, imagining what it would be like to be a butterfly at Valley Forge is very creative, but is neither dramatic nor historically enlightening (cf. Beavis and Butthead watching Beck's “Pay no Mind”).

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#18

Post by vesan »

Locke wrote: post #11
JimmyL wrote: post #4

Unusual? Certainly. Best? Not for me. I had some time this past summer and decided that I wanted to experiment a bit with Ruby. I tried Poignant three or four times, and each time I would put it down after half an hour, with the same thought - "Why is this book, widely regarded as the One True Way to learn Ruby, fucking around so much? I don't want foxes and cartoons, I want syntax, rules, conventions, and informatio…

Poignant is fun . That's all. Probably the best book for really learning Ruby is The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. Hal clearly gets Ruby. The book is thorough (although possibly a little out of date now), introduces a lot of idiomatic Ruby, and has just the right amount of geeky inside jokes.

There is a second edition of The Ruby Way released last year(2008).

Re: The Most Unusual (and Best) Computer Language Book I've Ever Seen.

#19

Post by twopoint718 »

rtra wrote: post #6
JimmyL wrote: post #4

Unusual? Certainly. Best? Not for me. I had some time this past summer and decided that I wanted to experiment a bit with Ruby. I tried Poignant three or four times, and each time I would put it down after half an hour, with the same thought - "Why is this book, widely regarded as the One True Way to learn Ruby, fucking around so much? I don't want foxes and cartoons, I want syntax, rules, conventions, and informatio…

Same. The first time i tried to read it I actually thought it was a joke.

I don't think I even realized what it was.
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