My current class @ UW Extension College

This works well as a reference book, but it's not exactly beach reading. I like that most things are easy to look up and laid out in a manner where it's easy to skim for what you want.

I've never made it through one of these books. I always end up reading random snippets on the web instead. It's fine though, half of it is just library documentation anyway. (as is always the case).

I just need to figure out how to make irb give me decent documentation... cheat? ri? rdoc? how can this not be built in?!

It is the "go to" Ruby book for a reason. If you want to learn Ruby (why wouldn't you?) you pretty much HAVE to read it. A number for things that I didn't quite understand earlier, have just "clicked" when reading this book. I definitely feel like knowledge I got from it was worth the time spend reading this book.

If you're a complete complete Ruby novice (like me) you will want to read straight through the first 3 parts. Part 4 is a dry Ruby Library Reference, so you may want to leave that out until you need something specific from it.
If you know a bit about Ruby and programming in general you may simply refer to specific chapters for help in understanding specific topics. The chapter on metaprogramming is a doozy. :-)

This enormous book covers most of what you want to know about Ruby, and everything you never wanted to know. Its overview of the language is decent but seems poorly organized. It jumps back-and-forth between basic and advanced. Beginners would feel lost, while more advanced programmers have to skip around carefully. But if you don't skip around too much, you'll find nuggets that explain things much better than any other Ruby book. It also covers tangential subjects that you won't find in most Ruby books--RDoc, RSpec, Shoulda, IRB, and writing C extensions. The best part of this book is the reference manual at the end. It's more thorough and organized than any other Ruby book I've seen.

Excellent introduction to the Ruby programming language. Style is considerably more readable (an occasionally humorous) than the usual Tech book. Ruby is an object oriented, interpreted language.

This was a hard read to me and it took so much of will to finish it so I am not too sure if I would like to ever re-read that book or even answer affirmative to the question if I would read it at all if I knew how hard it was. Don't get me wrong, there is useful information, it is a known classic and it provides an overview of the language, but the writing style is sometimes too abstract or just doesn't spark interest (for me).

Required reference for a Ruby programmer. Required learning material for a ruby-newbie.

Ok clearly its written for programmers at least know some other language. Book contains spot on reference and comparisons to other languages when introducing ruby features. Other than that its not a holy bible book as ruby community insist, if you are experienced I would consider Well Grounded Rubyist but this book has much better formed examples.

How I learnt Ruby and a great example of moving the art of teaching programming forward from K & R's C approach.

so far so good