Ruby is an appealing language for sure , but is it worth learning it in 2020, with the intention of getting paid for one’s work? It is an honest question and in no way am i trashing the language. Just curious what others have to say about it
Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
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Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#52Why do Rubyists like this convoluted and almost childish communication style?
Why do some people like onions? Let's not say "Why do Rubyists like this…", consider instead "Why do humans like this…". Some of us liked it because it was fun, and appealed to our sense of humor. Ruby was weird back then. Some of us didn't like it, and for them there was the Pickaxe book among others. Personally I loved what _why did in the early Ruby scene. In fact one day I cold mailed him because I was feeling ra…
What was the project?
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#53this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.
I saw it as more of an art piece than a practical learning experience; the latter being more exemplified by books such as K&R and the like.
"Well Grounded Rubyist" and "Why's (Poignant) Guide" make an excellent combination for learning Ruby.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#54Aside from the book, this brings back all those fuzzy feelings of learning ruby. Boolean functions end in ?, in-place transformations end in ! each, unless. It's just such a beautiful language.
Which of course, we shall remember comes from our beloved Scheme. :)
.... and Perl and Smalltalk, the latter arguably being the greater influence.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#55this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.
This book is an art piece. That works for some people! Not others! The O'Reilly "The Ruby Programming Language" is the better choice; it has small contributions from _why but they're measured and appropriate.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#56Aside from the book, this brings back all those fuzzy feelings of learning ruby. Boolean functions end in ?, in-place transformations end in ! each, unless. It's just such a beautiful language.
Yes. In a perfect world Ruby would have left Python in the dust and enterprise software would be written in Clojure.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#57this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.
A book which stops you learning Ruby is in fact an excellent book.
I've been trying to figure out at which point ruby turned from hero into villain, but I feel like it's more a generation gap rather than some series of acute moments.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#58this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.
"... the main cause was this book."
Sorry, but blaming a single book for not learning something when there are an enormous number of other resources (and have been all along -- _why's was a long time ago, but so were, say Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails and the others mentioned here, and there has long been tons free on the web) probably means _you_ were actually the main cause.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#59I don’t think about _why every day the way I used to, but I still miss his presence.
Where did he go? I know he likes anonymity, but it's really sad that he just left.
My understanding is that he burned out and had to take himself offline. He used to be involved in quite a bit (also see Hackety Hack), and it can be really exhausting for some people. I'm hopeful that he found the balance that he needed, and glad for all the contributions he made along the way.
Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
#60this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.
Seems a little suspect to blame this book, when there were plenty of other excellent resources for learning Ruby at the time, and this one was obviously a little offbeat. For what it's worth I had the same experience with this book, but instead of blaming an artist whose book inspired thousands of Ruby programmers because it didn't inspire me, I moved on and got the Pragmatic Programmer's Ruby book instead, and I've had nearly 15 years of joyous Ruby programming in my career since. I'd say the main cause of you not learning Ruby was not this book, but your own behavior.