Jeremy McAnally

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since Feb 09, 2009
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Recent posts by Jeremy McAnally

Thanks for reading my book, but with all due respect, I really find it hard to reconcile that fact that you read it with the fact that you missed the whole chapter on Asynchronous Messaging (Chapter 7) and the whole chapter on Structured Documents (e.g., XML, JSON, YAML, etc.) in Chapter 10. We cover all of those topics, plus give you solid general Ruby skills that aren't covered in many other places.

One more small note: We also expect that you know Ruby. We say this in the "About this Book" section. As I noted in other threads, we don't teach Ruby in general but instead answer the question "I know Ruby, now what?" We teach you advanced skills that make sure that when you actually use Ruby in the enterprise, that you aren't just writing Java in Ruby but that you're writing idiomatic, solid Ruby code. So, thanks for your input! Glad to see that there's another author involved here, but I have to politely disagree with your assertions.
15 years ago
My advice (if it won't get you fired): it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. I think once your superiors see you get 4x as much done as your Perl-loving peers, they'll wonder what's going on.

If that's not a viable option (e.g., code reviews, etc.), then I'd suggest really pushing it with reason and research rather than emotions and religion. Our book should give you some ammo, but there also books like "From Java to Ruby" and others that provide a view of the transition from a number of viewpoints ("From Java to Ruby" is from a manager's perspective). I'd suggest maybe even targeting a few systems/scripts and rewriting them in Ruby to demonstrate the differences. At least, that's worked well for me in the past.

Assaf may have input on this issue, too.
15 years ago
Ruby 1.9 includes some internationalization features, and Rails has recently added a LOT of great internationalization features.
15 years ago
Assaf mentioned two, but you could also take a look at...

The Rails app templates which I wrote. It's a tiny DSL for generating base Rails applications (they'll be integrated in core in the upcoming version 2.3)

RSpec is a great testing DSL. We're seeing giant growth in this area, actually.

Prawn has a lot of DSLs around it that generate PDF's.

I think we'll see a ton more DSLs in the future, and I'm actually going to be talking about DSL design and construction at Mountain West Ruby Conference in March. So if you're interested in the topic, either attend the conference or watch the video on the web afterwards!

15 years ago
I think our book stands out because it answers a question that few books actually ask: "I know the language...now what?" Very rarely are there practical thoughts given to what you can actually do with a language. Usually you're fed arbitrary code examples with little relation to what you'd actually use the language for. In this case, though, we spent a lot of time making sure that we teach you how to get things done in Ruby.

As for actually learning Ruby, I'd recommend Manning's "The Well Grounded Rubyist" (coming soon) or my free Ruby book http://humblelittlerubybook.com. The former will obviously be much more in depth, but if you don't have the cash for it, then please enjoy the free book!
15 years ago
Do you mean in web applications or databases? Either way, the answer is yes.
15 years ago
Yup, as Matt pointed out Flex with Rails works great. You can use Flash, etc. perfectly fine since it just generates HTML.
15 years ago
If you really need something like overloading (even though I would recommend against is usually) you can sort of fake it by taking a hash of arguments:


15 years ago
I'm actually teaching Ruby to a group of middle schoolers, and they're taking to it VERY well. I think the fact that you can do things a lot of ways helps rather than hinders.
15 years ago
Yes, we advise that you at least have a basic grasp of Ruby before you dig in. You don't *have* to, but I think you'll be able to understand it a lot more, especially since we've geared the book towards answering "I know Ruby...now what?"
15 years ago
You would probably do well to read a quick start tutorial on Ruby or my free book about Ruby: http://humblelittlerubybook.com/

As I've noted in other threads, Ruby in Practice is really meant to be read after you have a basic understanding of Ruby. It answers the question "I know Ruby...now what?"
15 years ago
We target different areas of the Ruby world. "Programming Ruby" is excellent for learning the language, but Ruby in Practice sits on the next step: "I know Ruby...now what?" We teach you how to use the language in your software effectively in very practical ways.
15 years ago
Yes, we include a lot of examples with downloadable code!
15 years ago
I haven't had time to read the whole book, but from a cursory read/look at the TOC, I see:

1) We cover a *lot* more area in our book. I'm sure his coverage of his topics is great, but he covers (in my opinion) a rather narrow segment of real application development.

2) Our chapters are written by experts who work with this stuff every day. We sought out people who know this stuff really, really well because let's face it: you can't know everything. Greg Brown wrote *the* Ruby reporting library, so helped us out with our reporting chapter. David Black is an expert developer who's worked with databases and Ruby in a ton of environments, so he gave us a hand with our databases chapter. Then Assaf and myself contributed what we knew of the topic so you get very full, balanced coverage of every topic.

3) We include a lot of Ruby instruction that's simply missing from his volume. We really felt like learning how to use the language better, learn how to use the tools properly, and learn how to properly test your code are *vitally* important to making you a better developer, which is the point of our book rather than to just be an "enterprise cookbook."

Hope that answers your question!
15 years ago
Great! We're really glad to hear it will be useful to you.
15 years ago