The "Pickaxe" book was written by someone who simply does not grok Ruby. It is a gross and wordy tome written by a consultant for the sole purpose of generating revenue for a consulting business.
While it became out of date rather quickly, Matz's book on Ruby captured the spirit of Ruby and inspired the reader.
It would have been a good thing if Matz had been able to author his style of book, the "K&R" of Ruby. Maybe some of the original Japanese Ruby contributors could have worked together on this book.
Maybe with 1.9/2.0, Matz & close friends will be able to do this. And the Ruby world will have a proper book that captures the spirit of the latest Ruby. One can hope "-)
Karmen
· 1 year ago
I know the first Ruby book I read was the pickaxe and I loved it. Those class examples were suited, I believe, for someone transitioning from Java (as I was). Maybe the 3rd Ed. will get rubyized. :)
Chris FR
· 1 year ago
Also my first Ruby book and it provided genuine insight, as opposed to when I was learning C++ and bought Stroustrup's book. In fact, I ended up buying most of the Pragmatic books and as a Java developer myself, I think it's the best collection currently available.
pjm
· 1 year ago
I'm definitely one who finds the pickaxe book massively overrated. It just feels really sloppily constructed compared with some of the giants in its genre (such as "Programming Perl", which is a fantastic book: carefully written, funny, with helpful examples, and studded throughout with tidbits of unix history and culture).
The examples in the pickaxe are definitely the worst part of it for me, but the supposedly "famous" tutorial is also really limp.
Still, Ruby books on the whole are not exactly stellar: I do like David Black's "Ruby for Rails", and "The Ruby Way" looks interesting (haven't read it properly yet), but "Rails Recipes" and "Rails Cookbook" have both proven to be very disappointing purchases. In a funny coincidence Zed writes the foreword to "Rails Cookbook", and essentially describes how great the original Perl Cookbook is/was, whilst "hoping" that the current book would be of comparable quality. But in reality it's so far from being the book that Zed hopes for that it's not funny...
Paul
Doug Bromley
· 1 year ago
I've said before and I'll say it again: Pickaxe is overrated. You only have to look at other similar titles for other languages to realise that.
I think the reason Pickaxe got away with it is the number of Ruby books at the time of its initial release was quite small.
Pickaxe is half ruby documentation and half sloppy tutorials. Waste of time and money.
Pointing to the popularity of a book is irrelevant as we all know 'the masses' are idiotic.
AkitaOnRails
· 1 year ago
Ok, the Pickaxe is not the best book around. But remember: it is one thing to write about an american language, having english speaking authors and community. It is something else having japanese authors, community and source codes/examples. I am japanese and I challenge anyone to try it.
Now I don't want to be apologetic. I wrote a book once and it is no easy thing. Try writing a book for a virtually non existant market and odds are you'll only be able to do so much. It was 2000 remember?
Could it be better? Sure, but that's why you have choice. I particularly prefer The Ruby Way. But then again, it doesn't make the Pickaxe less important. Without it probably there would take more time for Ruby to get in America. Unless you're willing to speak japanese :-P
Robert
· 1 year ago
I have the first Pickaxe book and I genuinely didn't like it. I think mainly because I didn't really like the jukebox examples. I shelved it. I didn't paint Ruby with what I thought of that book though. There are other books out now that are better I think. The Pickaxe was first and so it is on the altar of Ruby like it or not.
Ken
· 1 year ago
I like the Pickaxe book. Do I think it's perfect? No. Can I name any "perfect" Ruby books? No. Come on - give Dave a break. He had enough nerve and fortitude to go out and write this book long before Ruby was so popular. And, let's face it, he definitely helped make Ruby popular. It's easy to sit back and criticize but I'd like to see the books from the commentators above. Would they be "perfect"? Absolutely not. I learned a lot from Dave's book and I like it. I do agree with Dennis that having more than one book is good and I particularly like "Ruby for Rails" by David A. Black. By the way Dennis, thank you for writing this blog post. It's nice to see someone coming to Dave's defense.
an idiot
· 1 year ago
"Pointing to the popularity of a book is irrelevant as we all know ‘the masses’ are idiotic."
And you're calling Rails developers elitists?
Weren't you defeated at Waterloo?
Doug Bromley
· 1 year ago
My point stands. Popularity is not an indicator of quality. Hitler was popular - he wasn't exactly the greatest leader of the past Century.
Treating Dave Thomas like a saint is ridiculous. He's a businessman who saw an opportunity to release an English-language book on a subject he believed would take off.
Even his making of the first edition free was nothing more than a marketing tool to explode the uptake of Ruby and therefore increase sales of the second edition.
an idiot
· 1 year ago
OK, you win - happy now.
Dennis Martinez
· 1 year ago
This seems to be like a good topic to generate some discussion. I'm pleased to read all these comments.
@Karmen - I don't know much Java, so I honestly wouldn't know where this would apply. Maybe there's some truth to this, since the Pragmatic Programmers released a book later on called Rails for Java Developers, so maybe Dave was gearing towards the Java audience.
@pjm - Which tutorial are you talking about? if you're referring to the Karaoke Jukebox machine Zed mentioned in his rant, then I would agree with you in that part. But that's just a segment of the book, not everything. I don't think there's a "perfect" programming book for any language, which is why I suggested reading more than one book on any given subject, to compensate missing language features from one book to another.
@Doug Bromley - As others have pointed out, Ruby was virtually non-existent in the minds of programmers in the U.S. before Pickaxe. There are a lot of folks who learned a lot from this book (as shown by my E-Mail to DHH). And popularity doesn't equal quality or greatness at any level, but I doubt the "masses" are "idiotic". Well, not all of them, at least. In no form I'm treating him as a saint. Can you blame him for getting into an untapped market to make money? I would've done the exact same thing. It's no coincidence Ruby experienced an increase in usage ever since his book came out.
@AkitaOnRails - Interesting that you've written a book. I know that it's not easy, especially for a virtual foreign programming language. I wasn't trying to be apologetic either. I'm just trying to point out that the Pickaxe book isn't the piece of garbage everyone's making it out to be recently.
@Robert - If you base your opinion on the book thanks to that particular segment, I don't think you're looking at the full picture. Like I've stated already, that segment was confusing, to say the least. The rest of the book was pretty solid, in my opinion. After I read Pickaxe, I went on to other Ruby books. But that didn't take away the fact that most of my Ruby learnings were thanks the Pickaxe book. I'm glad you went on to other books, though, and didn't shelf the language just because you didn't like one book on the subject.
@Ken - I'm glad you agree with my points. I didn't write this post to defend Dave. I just wanted to give my opinion on the book, because I think it's a good base to learn Ruby. Of course, it's my opinion, and as you can see, a lot of people have their own.
@an idiot - I'm guessing that's not your real name... I'm not sure what your opinions are, but thanks for stopping by, I guess.
Peter Cooper
· 1 year ago
Just to repeat my comments from DZone for a more complete public record..!
You said: I don't think a lot of people had their negative feelings bottled up or something for so long, only to unleash them when a high-profile name came out and said it first.
Actually, that's precisely true in my case. As I have both a competing book, and the most popular weblog in the Ruby sector, it was a politically correct decision for me not to bash the Pickaxe, but I did so after Zed's outburst simply because a big outburst is a good way to seep out true opinions in the backchannel ;-)
The Pickaxe is to be applauded for being still the only true Ruby "reference" book, but it's still not a particularly good book overall and acted as a major motivation for mine as the Pickaxe is next to useless for beginners.
pjm
· 1 year ago
Yep, I found the "acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby" (as it's advertised on the pragprog web site) to be quite deflating. Rather than highlighting those aspects of Ruby that could distinguish it from other languages (including, but not limited to, ease of use, clarity, brevity, use of blocks) we get a slow amble involving a semi-regular return to a boring jukebox example. And "here's how you do it in Java" comparisons...
To be honest I'd forgotten that the "tutorial" was so diffuse. It looks like the first *part* of the book is considered to be the tutorial, which gets us to page 173!
@Ken: I'm certainly not saying that I'd be able to write a decent book on ruby. That is in no way implied by what I wrote above. But when everyone else is fawning over a book/author a little balance isn't necessarily a bad thing. As above, (I'm a migratory beast, moving from Perl), when I saw reviews stating that the pickaxe was as good as, or even *better* than "Programming Perl" I ordered it immediately. Sadly it's not even in the same ballpark.
So I suppose what I'm trying to get across here is that by no means is the pickaxe a *bad* book, it's just not the great book that I have consistently been told it is. Others evidently have similar views.
Dan
· 1 year ago
It's hard to find a book on Amazon that doesn't mostly have 5-star reviews, so that data is not very useful.
The Design Patterns in Ruby is great, at least for someone coming from Java. I hope Russ Olsen writes some more books.
Robert
· 1 year ago
I would like to add as well that it was the first edition of the Pickaxe. I have not looked at the second edition and I am sure there are some changes. I do not base a language on the boos I read because those are filtered through the author. I tend to get books to get overviews only.
Russ Olsen
· 1 year ago
For what it is worth, I've always found the pickaxe book a good reference, maybe the best one around, but I have to say that "the Ruby way" was the book that really taught me Ruby.
Russ
PS - If Dan keeps saying nice things like that, I guess I will have to write another book.
All Comments
The "Pickaxe" book was written by someone who simply does not grok Ruby. It is a gross and wordy tome written by a consultant for the sole purpose of generating revenue for a consulting business.
While it became out of date rather quickly, Matz's book on Ruby captured the spirit of Ruby and inspired the reader.
It would have been a good thing if Matz had been able to author his style of book, the "K&R" of Ruby. Maybe some of the original Japanese Ruby contributors could have worked together on this book.
Maybe with 1.9/2.0, Matz & close friends will be able to do this. And the Ruby world will have a proper book that captures the spirit of the latest Ruby. One can hope "-)
The examples in the pickaxe are definitely the worst part of it for me, but the supposedly "famous" tutorial is also really limp.
Still, Ruby books on the whole are not exactly stellar: I do like David Black's "Ruby for Rails", and "The Ruby Way" looks interesting (haven't read it properly yet), but "Rails Recipes" and "Rails Cookbook" have both proven to be very disappointing purchases. In a funny coincidence Zed writes the foreword to "Rails Cookbook", and essentially describes how great the original Perl Cookbook is/was, whilst "hoping" that the current book would be of comparable quality. But in reality it's so far from being the book that Zed hopes for that it's not funny...
Paul
I think the reason Pickaxe got away with it is the number of Ruby books at the time of its initial release was quite small.
Pickaxe is half ruby documentation and half sloppy tutorials. Waste of time and money.
Pointing to the popularity of a book is irrelevant as we all know 'the masses' are idiotic.
Now I don't want to be apologetic. I wrote a book once and it is no easy thing. Try writing a book for a virtually non existant market and odds are you'll only be able to do so much. It was 2000 remember?
Could it be better? Sure, but that's why you have choice. I particularly prefer The Ruby Way. But then again, it doesn't make the Pickaxe less important. Without it probably there would take more time for Ruby to get in America. Unless you're willing to speak japanese :-P
And you're calling Rails developers elitists?
Weren't you defeated at Waterloo?
Hitler was popular - he wasn't exactly the greatest leader of the past Century.
Treating Dave Thomas like a saint is ridiculous. He's a businessman who saw an opportunity to release an English-language book on a subject he believed would take off.
Even his making of the first edition free was nothing more than a marketing tool to explode the uptake of Ruby and therefore increase sales of the second edition.
@Karmen - I don't know much Java, so I honestly wouldn't know where this would apply. Maybe there's some truth to this, since the Pragmatic Programmers released a book later on called Rails for Java Developers, so maybe Dave was gearing towards the Java audience.
@pjm - Which tutorial are you talking about? if you're referring to the Karaoke Jukebox machine Zed mentioned in his rant, then I would agree with you in that part. But that's just a segment of the book, not everything. I don't think there's a "perfect" programming book for any language, which is why I suggested reading more than one book on any given subject, to compensate missing language features from one book to another.
@Doug Bromley - As others have pointed out, Ruby was virtually non-existent in the minds of programmers in the U.S. before Pickaxe. There are a lot of folks who learned a lot from this book (as shown by my E-Mail to DHH). And popularity doesn't equal quality or greatness at any level, but I doubt the "masses" are "idiotic". Well, not all of them, at least. In no form I'm treating him as a saint. Can you blame him for getting into an untapped market to make money? I would've done the exact same thing. It's no coincidence Ruby experienced an increase in usage ever since his book came out.
@AkitaOnRails - Interesting that you've written a book. I know that it's not easy, especially for a virtual foreign programming language. I wasn't trying to be apologetic either. I'm just trying to point out that the Pickaxe book isn't the piece of garbage everyone's making it out to be recently.
@Robert - If you base your opinion on the book thanks to that particular segment, I don't think you're looking at the full picture. Like I've stated already, that segment was confusing, to say the least. The rest of the book was pretty solid, in my opinion. After I read Pickaxe, I went on to other Ruby books. But that didn't take away the fact that most of my Ruby learnings were thanks the Pickaxe book. I'm glad you went on to other books, though, and didn't shelf the language just because you didn't like one book on the subject.
@Ken - I'm glad you agree with my points. I didn't write this post to defend Dave. I just wanted to give my opinion on the book, because I think it's a good base to learn Ruby. Of course, it's my opinion, and as you can see, a lot of people have their own.
@an idiot - I'm guessing that's not your real name... I'm not sure what your opinions are, but thanks for stopping by, I guess.
You said: I don't think a lot of people had their negative feelings bottled up or something for so long, only to unleash them when a high-profile name came out and said it first.
Actually, that's precisely true in my case. As I have both a competing book, and the most popular weblog in the Ruby sector, it was a politically correct decision for me not to bash the Pickaxe, but I did so after Zed's outburst simply because a big outburst is a good way to seep out true opinions in the backchannel ;-)
The Pickaxe is to be applauded for being still the only true Ruby "reference" book, but it's still not a particularly good book overall and acted as a major motivation for mine as the Pickaxe is next to useless for beginners.
To be honest I'd forgotten that the "tutorial" was so diffuse. It looks like the first *part* of the book is considered to be the tutorial, which gets us to page 173!
@Ken: I'm certainly not saying that I'd be able to write a decent book on ruby. That is in no way implied by what I wrote above. But when everyone else is fawning over a book/author a little balance isn't necessarily a bad thing. As above, (I'm a migratory beast, moving from Perl), when I saw reviews stating that the pickaxe was as good as, or even *better* than "Programming Perl" I ordered it immediately. Sadly it's not even in the same ballpark.
So I suppose what I'm trying to get across here is that by no means is the pickaxe a *bad* book, it's just not the great book that I have consistently been told it is. Others evidently have similar views.
The Design Patterns in Ruby is great, at least for someone coming from Java. I hope Russ Olsen writes some more books.
Russ
PS - If Dan keeps saying nice things like that, I guess I will have to write another book.