

O'Reilly's "The Ruby Language" for $9.99 (limited time) - pjonesdotca
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516178/
I'm not a shill. I promise.<p>Also has illustrations from _why, so could mean it's got some collectible status?<p>HatTip: RubyInside via LinkedIn
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vlad
I happened upon that PDF yesterday on scribd via google. I was pondering
between purchasing the $25 PDF edition of Programming Ruby 1.9
(<http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ruby3/programming-ruby-1-9>) and this one. I
was surprised to see this price, which had apparently been adjusted a few
hours prior. I purchased it because it was written by the author of Ruby, was
twice as affordable, and because the preview on scribd contained a lot more
pages for me to help base my decision on. It also covers Ruby 1.8, as well.

The quality of the PDF is immaculate. Only the cover pages are scanned in: the
rest of it is glorious vector text and graphics, allowing one to zoom in and
out as much as they could want, similar to what I like to do when reading web
sites. It's also searchable, which regular books are not.

The fact that it's a digital work forces one to scan the book, skipping past
parts one recognizes, putting in practice those they don't.

Finally, a digital edition enables one to easily copy-paste those parts of
code he or she doesn't feel like typing out themselves.

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gila
I can never bring myself to buy ebooks it just isn't worth it to read on a
screen I hate it. This is tempting but it still seems like a waste.

Print is always better than digital in my opinion though I haven't tried a
kindle yet.

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dzlobin
It's 11 dollars used on amazon, I'm going to opt for that one instead. I am
fully with you on ebooks, reading books on screen isn't pleasurable for me at
all.

edit: amazon has it for 8 dollars for the kindle( which can be read on am
iphone if you're so inclined)

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jhancock
I bought the hard copy on amazon a few weeks ago. Best ruby books I've seen.
It ranks high compared to 'best of' books for other langs as well.

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railsjedi
This is the best Ruby book out there, in my opinion. Especially for
experienced developers, it explains all the language features in simple and
straightforward terms.

Ebook is the only way to go for this. I have this book one click away at all
times (via launchbar on osx), for quick reference.

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sabon
If you enter the promo code "LREL40", you get further discount to $5.99.
Confirmed, I've just bought with that code and it's indeed $5.99.

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Derrek
Worked for me too. $6 for a bad ass book. Thanks for posting

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dzlobin
Can anyone comment on whether this book would be a better purchase compared to
Cooper's Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430223634/ref=pd_luc_sbs_0...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430223634/ref=pd_luc_sbs_02_02)

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Dylanfm
This book is really good. I had read the Pickaxe before I picked this one up,
so I'm not sure whether it's a good introductory book for Ruby. I haven't read
Beginning Ruby either, so I can't compare. Nonetheless, if you're going to be
working with Ruby I definitely recommend getting this book at some point. Why
not now when it's cheap?

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dzlobin
True, I was drawn to beginning ruby because it covered web application
development and frameworks( both to an extent)

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pjonesdotca
While I understand your comment, as someone who's fortunate enough to be paid
to program in Ruby, I find it a little sad that Ruby is considered mostly in
Rails terms.

While I was unemployed, one of the recruiters I was with mentioned that they
referred to me as the "Ruby on Rails" guy. Which kinda sucked because they
were only looking at jobs for me with "web" application.

I turned around and wrote a FXRuby wrapper for ai4r that can be run on the
desktop sort of as a reaction to show that Ruby can run on the desktop too.

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Adaptive
I find "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" by David Black to be an excellent intro to
Ruby. My only comparison is with the Pickaxe, to which it is superior
(clearer, scales to different experience levels, not overloaded as a
reference).

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miguelpais
For that price you can usually just buy the real book brand new from the new &
used section of amazon.com. I've been saving some good money with that. If you
just be careful with the feedback ratings and not really trust the lowest
price you will probably get a real new book as advertised and save some good
money.

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icco
Aww, I was so hoping this was a print edition. That would be a steal. Here's
to badly written link titles!

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bartl
It's a PDF, right?

It's an experiment, there are more e-books available for that price, including
several Perl books: <http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/39524>

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Pistos2
Hm. When I cliked on the Ebook "Add to Cart", Opera complained that the
encryption key length was too short, and thus that the site was insufficiently
secure.

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runningdogx
Opera is correct. <https://epoch.oreilly.com> is using a 512-bit RSA key.

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pjonesdotca
HatTip: RubyInside via LinkedIn.

