Author: Jason D. Clinton
Publisher: Addison Wesley, 2008
Pages: 224
ISBN: 978-0672328978
Aimed at: Ruby programmers
Rating: 4
Pros: Several interesting and readable essays
Cons: Not a handy reference
Reviewed by: Mike James

Be warned this is a very small book - a true pocket book that really would fit in you top pocket. It's not exactly a reference work either so you are unlikely to want to carry it around just to lookup that particularly difficult piece of syntax. It can be best described as a collection of essays on topics that the author finds interesting. It starts off considering tasks that relate to basic Ruby - strings, objects, types, arrays and collections - and then moves on to examples in what you could call Ruby application areas - XML. Qt, web pages, database and so on. Any one of the short chapters is worth a read if you happen to need to find out about the topic and they would have made very nice, but not very advanced, magazine articles. So if you are looking for a collection of articles on using Ruby in a very small book format - this is it.

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