pickaxe.

pickaxe. Programming Ruby, the Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt, Addison Wesley 2001, 564 pages.

Affectionately known as "The Pickaxe Book"

This is a classic book. Even if you are not going to program in Ruby, it is well worth reading, becuase you will learn so much about programming and good programming practices. In particular, I can think of no better guide to object oriented programming than the Pickaxe Book.

The first chpater, "ruby.new", is as good a brief guide to the beauty of pure object oriented programming as one is likely to find. It is succinct and it sparkles.

Ruby is object oriented from the ground up, because Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto planned it that way. If pure, clean, crisp object oriented code is your desire, then Ruby is your language and the Pickaxe book is the one true book for you!.

Although I am not a good Ruby programmer, I learned a lot from this book and it has made me a better Python programmer, in particular. I heartily recommend this book.

Ron Stephens