Ruby Cookbook

by Lucas Carlson, Leonard Richardson

Do you want to push Ruby to its limits? The Ruby Cookbook is the most comprehensive problem-solving guide to today's hottest programming language. It gives you hundreds of solutions to real-world problems, with clear explanations and thousands of lines of code you can use in your own projects. From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer. Beginners and advanced Rubyists alike will learn how to program with: If you need to write a web application, this book shows you how to get started with Rails. If you're a system administrator who needs to rename thousands of files, you'll see how to use Ruby for this and other everyday tasks. You'll learn how to read and write Excel spreadsheets, classify text with Bayesian filters, and create PDF files. We've even included a few silly tricks that were too cool to leave out, like how to blink the lights on your keyboard. The Ruby Cookbook is the most useful book yet written about Ruby. When you need to solve a problem, don't reinvent the wheel: look it up in the Cookbook.

Genres: Programming, Coding, Software, Technology, Computers, Nonfiction, Reference

906 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Lucas Carlson is a bestselling novelist. He takes his first-hand experiences as an entrepreneur and computer programmer, and turns them into thrillers that pack a punch and are hard to put down.

His writing has often been compared to Michael Crichton, Joseph Finder, Harlan Coben and Blake Crouch. They deal with technology and business themes and how they affect society.

Carlson lives in San Diego with his family.

Reviews

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This enormous book provides tons of ready-made Ruby code snippets for common and not-so-common problems. With books this big, I usually suspect the author of wasting words, but not this one. It just covers a ton of stuff, everything I could fathom anyone would want to use the language for, including object-oriented programming, metaprogramming, MIDI, XML, HTML, graphics, databases, persistence, internet services, web development (Ruby on Rails), web services, distributed programming, debugging, testing, optimizing, testing, packaging, automation, multitasking, multithreading, GUI, command line interfaces, C extensions, and system administration. Like I said, EVERYTHING.

Each solution also comes with a thorough discussion, which really helps you understand the solution in-depth. These "recipes" aren't intended to document everything completely, but to give you a good understanding of it, and tell you where to look for more information. They're like mini-tutorials. Plus, this book also provides fun little tricks that aren't necessarily useful, but really interesting. These are like dessert recipes.

The best part is, most everything in this book is well-written and easy to follow. Things I thought I'd already understood, this book helped me understand better, and it really got me a lot more comfortable reading Ruby code. The book is also arranged in a very logical way. I think this is the perfect reference manual, not only for syntax, but also for how to solve problems. And yet, despite its enormous size and excellence as a reference, it's also surprisingly easy to just read cover-to-cover.

[Ash Moran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to find an answer to a Ruby problem on the net and found it in here. Great examples on a wide range of topics, from the core language, to the stand library, to common gems. It could do with updating in places, but 80% of if it gold.

[John Orman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very large O'Reilly book covering many standard Ruby techniques. Many code snippets listed, but no CD/DVD included. The book can be accessed online for a limited time, guess you could cut code segments from there and run them in your test programs. I used the book for my online class in Cloud Computing/Ruby on Rails. Useful in working on a few assignments.

[masaki komagata · Rating 3 out of 5]

良くも悪くもクックブックという感じ。

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruby par l'exemple by Lucas Carlson (2006)

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent practical reference book filled with solutions.