I introduced myself to ruby only a short while ago and was immediately taken in by it’s power and simplicity. It really captures the clean, simple model of Smalltalk-80. This appeals to me, being an OO guy. I’m also an experienced perler and love the Perl Cookbook. It allows me to not keep everything in my head. This is a good thing when your hobby is to learn languages.
I decided to write the Ruby Cookbook simply because it didn’t exist, and was needed. Coming from Japan, Ruby doesn’t have that many resources available in English, and fewer still that are written as well as Ruby Programming. I decided to contribute, and this is it.
In many cases, I think that Ruby is a much better language than Perl and slighly better than python (NOTE: I’m an admitted language snob). I also think that many of the people who use perl or python would be at least curious to see what ruby is and how it compares. I’m not going to start a religious debate, that is simply my opinion. Yours may differ.
I’ve structured the cookbook to parallel the perl cookbook’s structure where appropriate. I think the perl cookbook is a wonderful book that allows a wide range of programmers to use it. It is only appropriate that I build off of that work. It also allows more people to look at ruby where they might otherwise be disinclined.
TODO: fix tense once I’ve done this?
I’m going to directly translate at half of the examples for this very reason, to give perlers an opportunity to compare directly. Sometimes this won’t be appropriate and I’ll have to diverge, and sometimes I’ll have to completely add or remove some sections. This is also a good thing, as it allows you to look at the table of contents of the two books and see where they line up and where they don’t.
Platform
All code in here was run under ruby version 1.6 under FreeBSD and was written to be as platform independent as possible.
Contact
If you find any errors, please email me at ryand-ruby@zenspider.com.
Status: In Progress