Learn Ruby Without Poignancy

I suppose this is two very closely related questions:

• Everyone says to start 开发者_StackOverflowwith Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, and I can't stand that book; what's another good starting point for an experienced programmer that has a more serious tone?
• If I'm not the sort of person who appreciates _why, should I skip Ruby because the community will not be to my taste?

I'm currently rolling through Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide. So far I think the concepts are well-defined by the authors, and the examples provided help clarify any misunderstandings. The book is available for free online or you can order a copy:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/

Update: More current version of book (Thanks bgporter)

http://pragprog.com/titles/ruby3/programming-ruby-1-9

The only problem with the online version is that it is a little outdated. I don't know Ruby that well yet so I can't say how much of the book is still valid in all cases, but the examples have worked for me so far when I run them. Note that the book available for purchase is up to date. It's hard to beat free, so be sure to check this guide out.

That being said, I don't think you should skip out on Ruby just yet. I've had a blast learning the language so far, and I'm looking forward to doing some full-fledged web development with Rails soon. At the very least give the language a chance; I think you'll find it a joy to work with.

I bought a lot of books learning ruby, the Well Grounded Rubyist was hands down the best.

And while we aren't really a community of _whys, we are a community of people who appreciate creativity and cleverness in code. If you are the sort of person who thinks there should only be one way to do something, and that way should be the clearest and most straight forward possible, python is probably for you. If you are the person who likes to push the language as far as it will go to create interesting and clever APIs, ruby is probably for you.

The Ruby Programming Language.

Programming Ruby would be my choice. It's also known as the Pickaxe book because of the cover:

It's a great introduction to Ruby. Why they still have the huge API reference in it in this day and age escapes me, though. It makes it thick as a brick, which is its only fault.

You can also find it online, although I think it's the first edition, which is well dated: http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/. The third edition is the one in print now, it was updated just months ago and covers Ruby 1.9.2, which is the latest version of Ruby at this time.

I don't particularly like _why either. He created some great libraries, but I can't stand the Poignant guide, nor any of the talks he made. You don't have to like him, or be like him to belong in the Ruby community.

Ruby Koans are great for learning those small things that make Ruby unique.

It's basically set of excercises that show you how things work. Each excercise is in form of a failing test, and you have to make sure it passes. And they're fun! :)

If you're going to do them all, I also suggest enabling autotest, so you won't have to run them manualy. This article explains how.

Not everyone says start with Why's book, for instance, me.

Here's a quick list of my on-disk Ruby books and references. You can search for their individual titles on the interwebs. Some are commercial, and some are free. I linked the ones that are part of an app's documentation that I saved as PDFs so I'd have them on my laptop.

• Agile Web Development with Rails
• Programming Ruby
• Ruby Best Practices
• Sequel cheatsheet
• Sinatra Book
• The Ruby Cookbook
• The Ruby Programming Language
• The Ruby Way
• The Well Grounded Rubyist

Why's book is worthy, but reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson trying to write a programming book, complete with Ralph Steadman drawings, which really disturbs me.

Also, don't overlook using ri, which is the on-disk reference to Ruby's libraries and gems. Also, the core library and standard library docs are really useful.

I was in your position this summer. Why was not for me, but I did find an excellent online resource: http://railstutorial.org/. It is actually for learning Ruby on Rails, but you can use it to learn Ruby as well. I'm not very experienced but I believe you can be part of the Ruby community without appreciating Why :-).

http://railsforzombies.org/ is a nice one , although it is not a book

Chris Pine's Learn to Program It's very straightforward. I started learning right away. It was very encouraging.

My colleague has written an excellent post summarizing starting points, books to read and paths to follow when learning ruby at http://www.jasimabasheer.com/posts/meta_introduction_to_ruby.html

I'd recommend taking a look at it, it has a wealth of information.

To add more info to the answers above, not really a book to learn ruby but a some companion resources for the learning process:

• Ruby Language Quick Ref
• Essential Ruby Refcard