Ruby par l'exemple by Lucas Carlson (2006)

This enormous book provides tons of ready-made Ruby code snippets for common and not-so-common problems. With books this big, I usually suspect the author of wasting words, but not this one. It just covers a ton of stuff, everything I could fathom anyone would want to use the language for, including object-oriented programming, metaprogramming, MIDI, XML, HTML, graphics, databases, persistence, internet services, web development (Ruby on Rails), web services, distributed programming, debugging, testing, optimizing, testing, packaging, automation, multitasking, multithreading, GUI, command line interfaces, C extensions, and system administration. Like I said, EVERYTHING.

Each solution also comes with a thorough discussion, which really helps you understand the solution in-depth. These "recipes" aren't intended to document everything completely, but to give you a good understanding of it, and tell you where to look for more information. They're like mini-tutorials. Plus, this book also provides fun little tricks that aren't necessarily useful, but really interesting. These are like dessert recipes.

The best part is, most everything in this book is well-written and easy to follow. Things I thought I'd already understood, this book helped me understand better, and it really got me a lot more comfortable reading Ruby code. The book is also arranged in a very logical way. I think this is the perfect reference manual, not only for syntax, but also for how to solve problems. And yet, despite its enormous size and excellence as a reference, it's also surprisingly easy to just read cover-to-cover.

Excellent practical reference book filled with solutions.

良くも悪くもクックブックという感じ。

A very large O'Reilly book covering many standard Ruby techniques. Many code snippets listed, but no CD/DVD included. The book can be accessed online for a limited time, guess you could cut code segments from there and run them in your test programs. I used the book for my online class in Cloud Computing/Ruby on Rails. Useful in working on a few assignments.

I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to find an answer to a Ruby problem on the net and found it in here. Great examples on a wide range of topics, from the core language, to the stand library, to common gems. It could do with updating in places, but 80% of if it gold.