zeljkofilipin 5 Chapters of O’Reilly’s #Ruby Best Practices – Free! http://bit.ly/aFhTcE
Of course, I followed the link and discovered the RubyInside web site... and that yes, O'Reilly has made the first 5 chapters of 'Ruby Best Practices' available in PDF form online for free.
I browsed them. Boring. Way to suck the life and passion out of a fun and cool programming language.
I've collected a bunch of Ruby ebooks in PDF and CHM (Windows help file) format in my travels over the last few years. I haven't read a single one of them. Or rather, the benefit (for me) is in helping me do a quick electronic search through the text to see if there's something that will help me with whatever current programming problem I'm working on.
I have a few books (sorry environmentalists, but I still prefer paper) that I use for reference and have a few that I still plan to read, but in general I've learnt programming by doing it. Which is to say that I don't really know how to program so much as do creative and well-documented hacking. ;)
I've got more to learn, but only as much as I need to learn to complete whatever projects I'm working on. I'm not a programmer by trade so I will defer to the experts when I need to get some real work done. God bless online forums! =)
Cheers!
Maybe you thought "Ruby Best Practices" was a recipe book. It is not. And most who have read it claim it captures the essence and life of the Ruby language, including Matz.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you've arrived at this conclusion, and it'd probably be useful if you elaborated on it rather than just being overtly whiny and negative about something you downloaded for free.