-The word is out: with ""Ruby on Rails"" you can build powerful Web applications easily and quickly! And just like the Rails framework itself, Rails applications are Ruby programs. That means you can't tap into the full power of Rails unless you master the Ruby language. ""Ruby for Rails,"" written by Ruby expert David Black (with a forward by David Heinemeier Hansson), helps Rails developers achieve Ruby mastery. Each chapter deepens your Ruby knowledge and shows you how it connects to Rails. You'll gain confidence working with objects and classes and learn how to leverage Ruby's elegant, expressive syntax for Rails application power. And you'll become a better Rails developer through a deep understanding of the design of Rails itself and how to take advantage of it.
Newcomers to Ruby will find a Rails-oriented Ruby introduction that's easy to read and that includes dynamic programming techniques, an exploration of Ruby objects, classes, and data structures, and many neat examples of Ruby and Rails code in action. ""Ruby for Rails"": the Ruby guide for Rails developers!
What's Inside Classes, modules, and objects Collection handling and filtering String and regular expression manipulation Exploration of the Rails source code Ruby dynamics Many more programming concepts and techniques!
A good introduction to Ruby the language, described coming from the perspective of a Rails user. The chapters on the Ruby environment itself were rather good, if a little too detailed at times. The book was a little long considering what it covered and tried to do too much (i.e. there are better books for learning Rails so it would have been better to shorten those chapters and focus more on the language aspects, tying them back into Rails where appropriate).
At times too detailed but great for when I needed the detail I couldn't find anywhere else. What also struck me was that the author is very much a part of the Ruby community and if you want more from him and others all you need to do head out to the rubytalk list.
Very well written, extremely readable. My only real criticism is the difficulty in using the text as a reference, which in all fairness is not a primary purpose of the author.