If you enjoyed the First Edition, you'll appreciate the new and expanded content, including: enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby's capabilities using C-language extensions. Programming for the world-wide web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems and other web services. There's even a new chapter on unit testing.
This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. "Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I'm working with it this book is at my side" --Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks
]]>Software development happens in your head. Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. It's time to take a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning, and start to refactor-and redesign-your brain.
]]>The Development Process
What to Do While Coding
Developer Attitudes
Project and Team Management
Iterative and Incremental Learning
These practices provide guidelines that will help you succeed in delivering and meeting your user's expectations, even if the domain is unfamiliar. You'll be able to keep normal project pressure from turning into disastrous stress while writing code, and see how to effectively coordinate mentors, team leads, and developers in harmony.
You can learn all this stuff the hard way, but this book can save you time and pain. Read it, and you'll be a better developer.
]]>New in the second edition: <ul><li>Updated for NUnit 2.4 (.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005) <li>More assert methods <li>New String and Collection assertion support <li>Better support for multiple-platform development <li>Higher-level setup and teardown fixtures <li>Whole new chapter on extending NUnit <li> and more!
]]>This book describes a practical, easy-to-follow way of using CVS, the most commonly used version control system in the world (and it's available for free). Instead of presenting the grand Theory of Version Control and describing every possible option (whether you'd ever use it or not), this book focuses on the practical application of CVS. It builds a set of examples of use that parallel the life of typical projects, showing you how to adopt and then enhance your pragmatic use of CVS.
With this book, you can:
Keep project all assets (not just source code) safe, and never run the risk of losing a great idea
Know how to undo bad decisions--no matter when they were made
Learn how to share code safely, and work in parallel for maximum efficiency
See how to avoid costly code freezes
Manage 3rd party code
Now there's no excuse not to use professional-grade version control.
Other Pragmatic Programmer books:
Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Applications (Mike Clark)
Pragmatic Unit Testing (Java and C# versions) (Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas)
Pragmatic Version Control using CVS (Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt)