Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
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Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
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Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#2I've just bought this book as well to get a deeper understanding of Rails (and also to get a newer book on Rails, most are aged).
While the first chapters are a refreshing take on Rails and easy to understand the book is getting kind of cloudy later when covering more complex topics. Cumbersome explanations followed by wack examples give you a hard time—you cannot easily grasp basic ideas, so you constantly switch between examples and theory but you just don't get it.
Especially, chapter 13 (on Singleton methods) is miserable. Admitting Ruby's Singleton Pattern isn't the easiest thing the book totally failed from here: I read this chapter dozen times until I gave up and just googled better explanations and I am sorry to say that every blog post about the Singleton Pattern did a far, far better job than this book. And from this point I did it with all following chapters—just scanned them briefly and googled better articles for respective subjects. This book was definitely not worth the money but at least I did again some Rails theory with the book as guideline.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#3Russ is one of the best technical writers I've read. I've only gotten through half of this book, but I've read his design patterns book cover to cover and it is fantastic.
He recently did an appearance on Ruby Rogues for their book club episode on Eloquent Ruby: http://rubyrogues.com/033-rr-book-club-eloquent-ruby/
That's definitely a good primer if you on the fence about purchasing this book.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#4I've just bought this book as well to get a deeper understanding of Rails (and also to get a newer book on Rails, most are aged). While the first chapters are a refreshing take on Rails and easy to understand the book is getting kind of cloudy later when covering more complex topics. Cumbersome explanations followed by wack examples give you a hard time—you cannot easily grasp basic ideas, so you constantly switch be…
In all fairness, it makes it pretty tough to take your comment seriously when you consistently refer to Rails when you mean Ruby.
Also, I have to disagree. Like the author of the post, I found Olsen's book to be a delightful read. It is certainly not a great "first book" on Ruby, however. I think you ought to read it once you've gained a little better understanding - its wonderful for smoothing out edges and cementing some of the more advanced concepts.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#5I've just bought this book as well to get a deeper understanding of Rails (and also to get a newer book on Rails, most are aged). While the first chapters are a refreshing take on Rails and easy to understand the book is getting kind of cloudy later when covering more complex topics. Cumbersome explanations followed by wack examples give you a hard time—you cannot easily grasp basic ideas, so you constantly switch be…
In all fairness, it makes it pretty tough to take your comment seriously when you consistently refer to Rails when you mean Ruby. Also, I have to disagree. Like the author of the post, I found Olsen's book to be a delightful read. It is certainly not a great "first book" on Ruby, however. I think you ought to read it once you've gained a little better understanding - its wonderful for smoothing out edges and cementin…
Good point with 'Rails'—my mistake—and I understand that now my competence could be questioned. I meant Ruby of course (which is Rails' core and if you got Ruby well you are a much better Rails dev and I think that's the #1 reason when reading Ruby books => Rails).
I appreciate the author and his work but frankly: I got so frustrated with the style. Go and read chapter 13 and compare all the blog posts about Singleton out there (it's a huge difference). Reading one chapter again and again just to see that someone on StackOverflow drew a far better picture doesn't make you happy. Or take the next chapter 14 about class instance variables: this topic is brought to the reader in a very verbose style and again, the net full of blogs and Q&As deliver better much results. People there even discuss and question the benefit or real-world usage of class instance variables which is fully omitted in the book.
>> its wonderful for smoothing out edges and cementing some of the more advanced concepts
Sorry, I totally disagree, especially the advanced stuff is delivered in better quality in the net. Don't get me wrong but your words sound like the typical not-helpful Amazon reviews (which made me buying this book). BTW, there more annoying parts like squeezing every subject at the end of a chapter in a monotone structure ("Staying out of trouble", "In the wild", etc.) which is getting boring quickly, doesn't give one a better understanding and feels like the author going through his checklist for every chapter.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#6I've just bought this book as well to get a deeper understanding of Rails (and also to get a newer book on Rails, most are aged). While the first chapters are a refreshing take on Rails and easy to understand the book is getting kind of cloudy later when covering more complex topics. Cumbersome explanations followed by wack examples give you a hard time—you cannot easily grasp basic ideas, so you constantly switch be…
Check out his Design Patterns book on Singletons. It's a little more thorough and has a different focus.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#7>> Using a method that is called on self in a class, don’t use self.method_name when just plain method_name will do. (loc. 1500)
I don't have the book in front of me so I don't know what the context is, but this strikes me as something as barely worth highlighting, other than to show that you grok Ruby's method chain.
Some programmers would argue that using self.method_name helps clear up ambiguity to humans who read the code, even if it is equivalent to method_name
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#8>> Using a method that is called on self in a class, don’t use self.method_name when just plain method_name will do. (loc. 1500) I don't have the book in front of me so I don't know what the context is, but this strikes me as something as barely worth highlighting, other than to show that you grok Ruby's method chain. Some programmers would argue that using self.method_name helps clear up ambiguity to humans who read…
Some programmers would argue that using self.method_name helps clear up ambiguity to humans who read the code, even if it is equivalent to method_name
This is the reason I highlighted it. I had heard both sides of the argument from peers and was a little conflicted myself. Russ is simply the highest authority I've encountered to have an opinion on it.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#9>> Using a method that is called on self in a class, don’t use self.method_name when just plain method_name will do. (loc. 1500) I don't have the book in front of me so I don't know what the context is, but this strikes me as something as barely worth highlighting, other than to show that you grok Ruby's method chain. Some programmers would argue that using self.method_name helps clear up ambiguity to humans who read…
Especially because some bare method calls will produce syntax errors ('class' being the obvious example).
I think there's no good rule of thumb to be had here; use whichever style makes the code clearer.
Re: Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9
#10I've bought the book a while ago and I pick it up whenever I have time, because I know it will always provide solid and enlightening information. The quality of writing is quite superb and I have not noticed any errors at all so far.
I've learned about the ways to call a method in ruby, what private and protected means, about the hows and whys of testing, about why it's better to have more smaller, specialized methods (and what that pattern is called), and much more. And I'm not even through 1/3 of the book.
Highly recommended!