Reviews for Best of Ruby Quiz: volume one (Pragmatic Programmers)

1. Essential reading for practical Rubying

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2006

   This book is a collection of 25 challenges from the ruby quiz website, with a substantial discussion of various solutions. Lots of word and number games abound. Some examples will give you an idea of what to expect: generating crosswords layouts, ranking poker hands, building (and solving) mazes, generating and cracking ciphers. You could check out a lot of this from the website, but the dead-tree format is more readable, and the discussion is much expanded.
   
   Up to date books on Ruby (rather than Rails) are scarce, so we should cherish this publication. Good as the Pickaxe is, it lacks examples of fully-working programs. There are plenty here, packed full of Ruby idioms - I learnt an immense amount from the quizzes. You will want to either be taking copious notes while reading this, or be sat in front of the computer, so you can fire up irb and play with the language features you don't understand. Of course, as a collection of idioms, one could imagine the material being organised more efficiently, but it would also be a lot drier.
   
   So much for the Ruby, what about the Quiz? I must say that I was less enamoured of the book as a collection of puzzles. I didn't find the problems themselves that exciting, although that's probably just me. You probably already know if you're likely to find this sort of thing fun. What was more disappointing was that the discussion of the solutions is tilted towards presenting a solution in chunks of code, and then explaining what each bit of syntax was doing. There is much less emphasis on analysing the problems, or weighing up the solutions. This is not to say that the book is bereft of such analysis, but it is sporadic and specific to the exact form of the problem. I understood all the solutions, but did not feel that I had gained any insight into the generalities of how to classify problems and identify solutions. This is not really what the book is about, but the blurb does highlight algorithm selection and problem analysis as one of its selling points, so one might be justified in feeling a little disappointed.
   
   Nonetheless, I still give this book four stars, for the wealth of Ruby action contained within. Book-starved newcomers to Ruby, having finished the Pickaxe, should consider this book as an must-read source of idioms and example programs, with a fun practical bent as a bonus. Well worth your money.