Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You

During the mid- and late-1980s I was was working in C and eventually C++. During that period I devoured any programming book I could get my hands on. My favorites were very practical books--those books that built real, working examples. Herb Schildt and Al Stevens were the best at this. I've often wished for such books on the newer languages as I learn them. Brian Marick has given us exactly this type of book with his "Everyday Scripting with Ruby." I'm one of those programmers who read a little bit about Ruby and was only mildly intrigued until I read about Rails. Once I read about Rails I just dove in--I didn't bother to learn much Ruby, only looking something up in "Programming Ruby" when I couldn't figure it out by trial and error. I became proficient enough at getting things done in Rails but certainly didn't have a solid, comfortable feeling for Ruby itself. This book fills in those gaps for me. This is the Ruby book I wish I'd read first. "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" covers four very real-life small projects, each of a decent size. The projects are small enough that you don't need to remember every detail from the prior 100 pages but are big enough that you can learn real lessons from them. This is absolutely the best beginner book on Ruby available.

When I first heard that the Pragmatic Programmers were putting out a book on Ruby oriented towards testers, I thought to myself that I knew a few testers who might be able to benefit. I was a bit surprised when I received the book and the focus changed from that of testing to something a bit more generic. And after flipping through it I was afraid this would be just yet another book teaching Ruby. Despite my initial misgivings, as I read through the book its value became apparent. This is not a book aimed at teaching people who are interested in developing complex systems in Ruby; this title is aimed squarely at using Ruby for scripting. "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" is a task-oriented tutorial that will help the reader quickly become productive writing useful scripts. The examples throughout the book are truly indicative of the types of problems that scripts are written to solve, and the book doesn't waste much time on fluff or things that are otherwise not likely to be of interest to the scripter. While "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" isn't much of a reference manual, it does work pretty well as a tutorial. Readers will typically get the most value from the book by reading it cover-to-cover and following along by getting the examples working on their own computers. Many of the chapters finish with problems for the reader to try out on their own, with the solutions to the problems being detailed in the back of the book. Through reading the text, trying the examples, and further exploration of the material through tackling the end-of-chapter problems, the reader will come away confidant that they can use Ruby to successfully write scripts to solve their problems. You can't ask for much more than that.

Everyday Scripting With Ruby is a book that is geared toward the computer user who is not afraid to scale new heights to try to improve their skills. The premise is that people who use computers routinely do many repetitive tasks that would be better offloaded for a computer to do. Often they think that programming it themselves is too hard, and they cannot justify hiring someone to write a program to handle their menial tasks. Using the Ruby language, anyone who is comfortable with a computer can now learn automate these tasks with a little training. Ruby is an object-oriented scripting language that originated from Japan. It takes some of the best features from some of the best languages and combines them to make a simple and easy to use yet powerful system for processing tasks. It is freely available as open source software and is available on many platforms including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Everyday Scripting With Ruby targets three audiences. First the "Tester," the person who is involved with the development of software but thinks that programming is too hard. The second target audience is the "Analyst" or someone who manipulates a lot of data. With Ruby scripts, they can automate mundane tasks and free up more time for more rewarding things. Finally, this book is for the programmer who hates to use complex programming languages to accomplish these smaller tasks. As I said in my full review at Blogcritics, Everyday Scripting With Ruby is a well written introduction to the Ruby language. While it may be too simple for an experienced Ruby developer, an experienced programmer coming to Ruby would find it easy to read and a good place to learn Ruby incrementally. Some one who is not a programmer by avocation, but enjoys mucking around a computer, will find it a wonderful treat!

My son and I have been reading Everyday Scripting with Ruby by Brian Marick. I really like Brian's way of teaching Ruby, and plan on recommending this book widely. (I may need to just buy a stack of copies to give out at work.) This is one of the best books from the 'Facets of Ruby' series by the Pragmatic Programmers. My favorite feature of the book is the incremental approach. In the first two sections ('The Basics' and 'Growing a Script') he writes a very pragmatic chapter showing how to do something, then a 'referency' (I know, it's not a real word) chapter that goes into more depth about the concept just introduced. The third section ('Working in a World Full of People') follows the pattern less strictly, but still pulls in both the pragmatic and the reference material. If you're getting started with Ruby, or know someone who is, this is a great book for you.

I'm only about two thirds of the way through "Everyday Scripting With Ruby", but I feel qualified to leave commentary already. If you've already read books published by the Pragmatic Programmers, then you're likely used to the sort of writing style that their authors seem to use- generally very practical, to the point, and a bit informal. If you've attempted to dive into Ruby you probably also have at least passing acquaintance with the "Pickaxe"- Programming Ruby- by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt. If you're a systems administrator, and a shell scripter, or if you're used to lower level languages like C and the like.. you may have had the instinct "great book, but where do I start?", when reading through the Pickaxe. This particular book is exactly the starting point for a knowledgeable technician or tester with a hands-on, intuition driven learning style, who may or may not be familiar with another scripting or programming languages, but for whom "Learn to Program" is too much of a step back, and "Programming Ruby" is too dense. There's no "Well, that's easy but where do I go from here" as with the former title, nor is there, "Well, that's amazing, powerful, and spiff, but where do I start", as with the latter. The book is all meat, no bones, no gristle, all useful. The teaching method that Brian Marick uses isn't too dissimilar from the method used in C by Dissection, by Ira Pohl, in that it shows working code pieces in context and derives rules for use from empirical use, but it's better in that all of the examples are tied to particular project themes by section and/or chapter. The tools that are developed as part of the book are tools you can and perhaps will use in your day-to-day processes, and provide a smart foundation for further exploration. The exercises are also not trivial, but not too abstract, nor are there too many of them.. I can't really think of a way to describe the book better than "pragmatic". Which is exactly what you should expect from this press. I'm rating 5 out of 5 for now, but may drop to 4 out of 5 for lack of end-book depth, but that's not really exactly fair. I wish I could drop a 4.5 / 5 on the book. For learning to use Ruby for practical non-rails-oriented, actual -WORK- tasks, and swiftly, I don't think there's a better bet for now.