[oak perl] Review of Ruby Pocket Reference

[Steve K]

On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 14:01 -0700, George Woolley wrote:
> hi all,
> there's a review of 'ruby pocket reference' 
> on our site at:   http://www.metaart.org/opug/reviews/rubypr.html
> should you wish to take a look at it.
> 
> if you have comments or corrections,
> great.
> - george
> 
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> 


George, 

A couple of small comments about your review.  And I am in no way
competent to criticize reviews, never having sold any.  Perhaps my
thoughts echo some you have already considered.

a) I know a good bit of Ruby, but not all.  When I want a good
reference,I get the 1st edition of the Pickaxe book.   The 2nd edition
(Thomas, Fowler, Hunt) lacks the tightness of the  first edition (Thomas
& Hunt).   

b) Did the pocket reference explain Ruby Iterators?   That was the
single feature which sold me on Ruby, as soon as I began to understand
it.
The Pickaxes did a poor job on them, and they are very important.

c) Did the pocket reference resolve the question of how to test files?
Ie: is this a file or a directory.  What is its permission and filedate.
The early pickaxe made it foggily clear there were several ways to do
these tests, but offered little guidance on which methods to use.
Neither Pickaxe has done that adequately, in my opinion.

Steve K


PS: I'm thinking about making Moose my favorite Perl module.  It
implements perl objects with a clean new syntax that hides the instance
hashes and reference/dereference fog generators.     Hard as heck to get
it installed, but very pleasing one you get it in.

Steve Kolupaev