Ruby tutorial for experienced programmers

Question

I'm looking for a Ruby tutorial which would be usable for Java programmers with 8+ years of experience. I don't need another tutorial which explains basic programing/OOP/OOD concepts (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, classes, constructors, hashes, etc.), just a fast-track tutorial (or even a reference?) which could tell us how to do specific things in Ruby.

Answer 1

This one is definitly the best one out there, if you ask me.

Ruby in 20 minutes

Answer 2

Ruby from java

Answer 3

I own the "pickaxe" book but it's too heavy to flip around in. Fortunately, a slightly older version of the book is available online.

There's a bit too much waffling around for an experienced programmer, there are a few explanations that are not desparately needed. Also, it feels like the book teaches you Ruby, then teaches it to you again; I still haven't quite figured out how to determine which bits are in the first part and which in the second. Still, it's a decently written book, easy to read and nobody's forcing you to read the whole thing. As someone only occasionally "doing" Ruby, I find it very useful to have this book available for searching in a browser.

The companion to this is the library reference It looks a bit like the Java API javadocs but isn't as complete, and I find it a bit harder to find things in it, but of course I have more experience with Java. OK, so there's not a full time staff of developers and writers working on it. In any case, this reference is invaluable especially in view of how big the library is.

Tip: "Ruby book" finds the book in Google, and "Ruby API" finds the RDoc. This is easy enough that I haven't bothered to bookmark either.

---

Yes, I know those aren't tutorials. Let's say they answer the "reference" part of the question.

---

Another tip: I skimmed through "Programming Ruby" in one weekend, and in the week after that I was able to sit down and write a small Rails project (in about 2 weeks' worth of evenings). It's impossible to learn and remember everything, of course, but the whirlwind tour gave me a good survey of what's available and I was able to get started and then look up anything I needed details for.

Answer 4

Be sure to try to absorb the Ruby way of doing things. It's very easy for Java/C#/C++ programmers to bring their way of doing things to Ruby and by so missing out on a lot of nice features. I'm not only referring to the dynamic nature but also to that it's more functional and that the OOP concepts and patterns gets implemented in quite a different fashion. Some patterns doesn't even make sense in Ruby.

The Ruby Way is a rather voluminous book to be used as a reference and even the shorter and maybe more suitable The Ruby Programming Language might be a longer read than you would prefer. Both are good to great books though.

Answer 5

Not brief, but the book I'm currently reading, The Well-Grounded Rubyist, is an extensive take on Ruby and it doesn't waste any time on the OOP tutorial.

Answer 6

Not brief either, but I'd suggest "Design Patterns in Ruby" by Russ Olsen:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321490452?ie=UTF8&tag=myspace099-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0321490452

Don't know yet how well this book will work for my purposes, which is to find a non-beginner guide to the language. I don't feel like learning Rails (or any framework for that matter) as I'm interested in the language itself, and the ways in which things can be composed with it.

Hopefully this book will serve that purpose (plus I'm also going to check "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" as glenn suggested).

Hope it helps.

Answer 7

I found Ruby Study Notes to be a fairly decent introduction for experienced programmers.

Answer 8

Another link for you: http://www.fincher.org/tips/Languages/Ruby/ That shows how to do a majority of constructs in Ruby.

I'm currently reading this: http://pragprog.com/titles/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby There are some things about Ruby that are way different than Java, C#, C++, or many other OOP languages, and this book runs through a lot of those intricacies of the language as a scenario: you're an experienced developer who just started a job as a Ruby developer and the experience guy on the team steps you through a lot of code.

I think you could easily pick up the language through the first link (learning the constructs), then running through the book in a week or so and picking up on much of Ruby's magic.