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Everyday Scripting with Ruby for Teams, Testers, and You
by Brian Marick


Pragmatic Bookshelf
1 edition
January 2007
310 pages

Reviewed by Jason Menard, April 2007
  (9 of 10)


When I first heard that the Pragmatic Programmers were putting out a book on Ruby oriented towards testers, I thought to myself that I knew a few testers who might be able to benefit. I was a bit surprised when I received the book and the focus changed from that of testing to something a bit more generic. And after flipping through it I was afraid this would be just yet another book teaching Ruby.

Despite my initial misgivings, as I read through the book its value became apparent. This is not a book aimed at teaching people who are interested in developing complex systems in Ruby; this title is aimed squarely at using Ruby for scripting. "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" is a task-oriented tutorial that will help the reader quickly become productive writing useful scripts. The examples throughout the book are truly indicative of the types of problems that scripts are written to solve, and the book doesn't waste much time on fluff or things that are otherwise not likely to be of interest to the scripter.

While "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" isn't much of a reference manual, it does work pretty well as a tutorial. Readers will typically get the most value from the book by reading it cover-to-cover and following along by getting the examples working on their own computers. Many of the chapters finish with problems for the reader to try out on their own, with the solutions to the problems being detailed in the back of the book. Through reading the text, trying the examples, and further exploration of the material through tackling the end-of-chapter problems, the reader will come away confidant that they can use Ruby to successfully write scripts to solve their problems. You can't ask for much more than that.

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Pragmatic Bookshelf
1 edition
January 2007
310 pages

Reviewed by Marc Peabody, April 2007
  (9 of 10)


I can't say it any better than this: You really need to learn Ruby if you haven't already. I also can't say it any better than this: If you're new to Ruby, Everyday Scripting with Ruby is the best bang for your Ruby buck.

I highly recommended this to our beginners at the Columbus Ruby Brigade and I highly recommend it now for Ruby beginners everywhere. Mr. Marick makes the journey into Ruby indisputably pragmatic. I was pleasantly surprised how much I learned from so few pages (a little under 300 in all). Other books and tutorials made me familiar with Ruby; this gem made me comfortable with it.

The book was originally intended for non-programmers, but my honest opinion is that at least some previous exposure to programming might be necessary to completely understand what's going on. So don't run out and buy a copy as a Mother's Day present unless your mother happens to do a lot of tedious, repetitive tasks on the computer and is looking for a way to automate everything (hey, it could happen). But let's face it: it's likely that your mom will prefer flowers and you'll prefer a copy of Everyday Scripting with Ruby.

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