I am not in the habit of reviewing books that I have not finished reading, but like the clinical trial that is stopped because it is obvious that patients taking placebos are at risk, this book can be reviewed even though I have only read about half of it.

If you are a beginning programmer, you want to write in Ruby (a superb programming language for the beginner), and you don't have this book, then you are missing out. Peter Cooper writes well, takes every topic from the beginning, and explains very clearly, with examples.

The range of topics is breath-taking. The usual beginners stuff, such as numbers, expressions, strings, text processing, arrays, hashes, flow control, dates, times, ranges, classes, instances, and large numbers, is all there. But the good news is, Peter Cooper doesn't stop there. He takes you on to using libraries, debugging techniques, testing, benchmarking, profiling, connecting to and programming databases, bindings, security, threaded execution, in-line inclusions, Unicode and UTF-8 support, networking, sockets, daemons, network operations, HTML sessions, XML processing, and much more. These are topics that beginners normally do not even touch. Even though this book is not dumbed down, it is absolutely clear and easy to follow. No prior background is necessary. If you go work through this book, you will be ready to work directly with advanced Ruby references. You will not be held up by lack of Ruby knowledge.

If you want to learn Ruby, my advice is buy this book and work through it. I don't think you will need anything else until you are ready for the advanced Ruby references, at which point you should be able to write quite sophisticated programs. This book literally takes the beginner to the professional level. A great buy.

Every serious Ruby programmer has a copy of the venerable 'Pickaxe' (the definitive Ruby reference manual) at their disposal, but if you're just getting you're feet wet with Ruby and serious about learning it from the ground up, then Beginning Ruby is just what you need.

The tagline 'From Novice to Professional' well describes the content. But if you're looking to delve into advanced GUI programming, then this isn't for you. This book takes you into the Ruby you need to know as the foundation for helping you become a great programmer. Peter Cooper introduces you to many critical concepts that you will need to master, but does so in a logical and easy to read manner. The text is neither dry nor whimsical, but a perfect blend between reference material and hands-on tutorial.

While I had tinkered with Ruby from 2002 onward, I never gave it any real attention until I stumbled upon Ruby on Rails in 2006. When I came to the realization my programming style looked like less of a 'style' than it did a Rube Goldberg machine, it was time to get back to basics ... and thankfully this book was published.

If you're serious about looking into Ruby, now is the time to pick this book up ... then you can go get the latest edition of 'The Pickaxe'. I almost want to buy a second copy out of sheer appreciation for Peter Cooper providing a great guide to a great programming language!

Beginning Ruby is one of the easier books to following Ruby, and get a decent understanding Object Oriented Programming (OOP). If you don't want to fork the money over yet for this book like I did not knowing if I would understand (I just now have grown a big enough interest into programming to want to study), then I would suggest grabbing the book called Learn to Program from Pragmatic Programmer Series. In that book he runs through basic ruby syntax, and programs that actually function more or less like a BASIC application would. Once you finish the short yet insightful Learn to Program book, this book becomes even easier to follow. Once you make your way through this book though, you will want to more then likely purchase the Pragmatic Programmer Ruby book (The Red Pick Axe Book, which the 3rd version is due out in October). But from a novice programmer perspective, this is an amazing book and is always by my side.

I wanted to use ruby on rails for my web applications, but after some failed attempts I decided to learn a bit of the ruby programming language first. This book guided me to the language, even if you are new programmer I completely recommend it.

I have dabbled in programming, but never really rolled up my sleeves to learn a language... until now. Both ruby and python seemed like great choices, and I looked for materials to play with them. Both offer some very nice features and the ability to get up and running with something useful and fun easily, yet offer plenty of room to grow. After a short evaluation period, I think I just like the "feel" of ruby better, but that's totally subjective. After settling on a language, I looked for a book.

I checked out Chris Pine's "Learn to Program", and of course _why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, and then this book. This one is, by a large margin, my favorite. Both Chris Pine's book and _why's guide have their moments, but in my opinion Cooper's book has a considerable edge in clarity and usefulness. It explains complex concepts in clear prose and then by example. I feel that I can tackle useful problems after having read the book. It seems to hit the sweet spot for being clear but not condescending, complex but not overwhelming. The examples are very applicable to many real-world problems.

This book is more of a tutorial than a reference, which is exactly what I needed as a new programmer. In addition to being a great ruby book, it's also one of the best "tech" books I've ever purchased. It's rare to see this level of quality in technical writing. I really hope Mr. Cooper continues to produce programming books.