It’s all very well me showing people the screencasts of people making Rails applications, or showing them how nice code looks when you frob XML with REXML rather than some other language’s DOM library, but if they are then interested in having a bit more of a play with Ruby, they should really be looking at Programming Ruby.
I used to point people at Programming Ruby, but now the first edition is old and out of date. I can’t point them at the new one, because they’d have to pay to read it, and they don’t know why they’d want to yet. Some people live in countries where the price of a copy of Programming Ruby (2nd edition) is more than a week’s salary.
There doesn’t seem to be anything approaching the quality of Programming Ruby which I can show to people, to get them started with writing their own Ruby. No, the API documentation is not a good way to learn, and neither is the source code (I had two people on #ruby-lang seriously suggest that beginners should read the Ruby source!) Why’s Poignant Guide is interesting, but I can’t see any grown-ups wanting to wade through it, and it’s certainly nowhere near as good as Programming Ruby.
So for now I’ve stopped evangelising Ruby. Perhaps the Pragmatic Programmers will realise that giving away Programming Ruby is good for the language, which in turn is good for their pockets, and switch to giving PDF and HTML versions away free, or perhaps asking for donations, so that those who’ve found the book useful could show their appreciation.