CSE 413 Autumn 2008 -- Ruby Resources

The main source for all things Ruby is http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/. A few specific pointers:

Implementations: The Ruby downloads page has general pointers. If you are a Windows user, the One-Click Installer has everything you need. If you are using OS X, the developer tools installation includes Ruby. The version on OS X 10.5 is quite current. The one on OS X 10.4 is older, but should be adequate for what we want. If you want the latest and greatest on OS X 10.4, it's probably just as easy to download the sources and build it instead of using MacPorts of Fink, unless you already have those installed. Linux users should just use their package manager to install the current version of Ruby (be sure to include the irb interactive environment).

Documentation: Start on the Ruby documentation page. There are various tutorials.

Books: The best tutorial is Programming Ruby by Dave Thomas and others. That link points you to the current edition, which can be ordered either as a printed book or a pdf or both. There is a 3rd edition in the works and if you want you can order the pdf now with free updates as it evolves plus optionally a copy of the printed version when that is available. Finally, the first edition is available free on the web, and should have everything we need for the class.

More recently, the creator of the language and a well-known co-author published The Ruby Programming Language (O'Reilly). Your instructor hasn't looked at this too carefully yet, but it does appear to be a great reference. It has less tutorial material than the Thomas book.

Finally, there is a good set of links from last fall's CSE 341 that are worth checking out.


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