Re: PickAxe tutorial (was What is the bes Ruby's book for beginners?)

On Thu, 15 May 2008 18:00:52 -0500, Dave Thomas <dave <at> pragprog.com>
wrote:

> 
> On May 15, 2008, at 4:52 PM, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> >
> > On the other hand, a lot of folks seem to like the tutorial parts of
> > the pickaxe, and the new O'Reilly "The Ruby Programming Language" has
> > very little in the way of a tutorial but is a GREAT reference.
> 
> 
> This is a topic that's been vexing me a lot in the last few weeks.
> 
> I'm working on the third edition, and I keep going back and forth on  
> the tutorial section. I personally like the quirkiness of doing things  
> like describing classes before expressions, simply because it gives us  
> a vocabulary to talk about things. But I know other people feel its  
> the wrong way around--explanations should build bottom up.
> 
> I've been trying it both ways, and I'm frankly stalled. I'd be  
> interested to hear opinions. Keep as is (perhaps losing the jukebox,  
> and adding a chapter on basic OO for people coming from procedural  
> languages), or reorder it into something more conventional?

Sorry to come to this late. I was fine with the OO stuff and I think
introducing classes before expressions was a great idea. When I first
met ruby the insight that everything (even classes!) was an object and
therefore had methods was refreshingly different from other languages
I had worked with, so it made sense to introduce ruby by introducing
classes. Where I struggled with the Pickaxe book (2nd edition) was
when I first encountered blocks and functional programming. This was
simply new to me (I had never worked with a functional language
before) and I had to read a few sections a few times to understand
what was going on. I also had to try things out, which was good. 

I really like Programming Ruby and used it as a way to learn ruby. It
worked well for me then and continues to work well as a reference. I
personally believe that there are plenty of introductions to OO
methodology (both websites and books) so there shouldn't be too much
introductory material of that sort added to a new edition.

Oh yes, the other thing I recall finding difficult at first was where
the objects and methods defined in irb really belong - it felt like an
exception to the "everything is an object" rule because I was working
at the top level. 

Best,
Tony