Talk:Ruby Programming

Refresh this project
I think this book contains some really useful information, but in its current form it's not all that much fun for a reader to read through this. There are multiple issues that could be improved and make this book into a really good one (and make it fun to read an contribute to):

Table of Contents: One of the first things a possible reader is going to see when encountering this book is the main page with the table of contents. In my eyes however the table of contents is quite big and contains some things that could easily be moved to other pages (for example do we really need a link to every control structure in the table of contents? Alternatively there could be a table of contents of the main topics which is easy to navigate and a list of all default modules, classes, and commands) to improve readibility.

Consistent syntax highlighting: Currently I see multiple ways how code is highlighted. (There's basically inlines without borders and some with borders; code is typically highlighted but with console outputs it's not always clear.) Content wise this isn't a real issue but I think it would do good to the presentation quality of this book. I'm not sure if there's a general style guideline for it already and I'm missing anything out, but what about making sure that everything is in a bordered box so it's clear where the main text stops and the code example starts?

Page completion: I think it would mean a lot if it was easy to spot from the table of contents how finished a given page is. Some pages really could need more work than others do.

Outdated information: Some pages deal with stuff that's not absolutely up to date with newest Ruby versions anymore (eg. old default encoding ascii). Should this be fixed or left as is? Personally I'd like the idea of having a really up to date book that will enable people to use current versions of Ruby.

Ok these are just some things and I didn't finger point at everything but I think it's a good idea to see what could all be done about the book. I'll try to fix some of these things, but I just wanted to know what anyone else thinks about this all and I don't want to accidentally do something that needs to be reverted...

Evotopid (discuss • contribs) 18:04, 28 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. Old info needs to be removed, no question. Plus, I don't see the benefit of having all the library reference material in this textbook when the official Ruby docs contain it all, and are freely-licensed. I think we should delete those sections, and I'll be tidying up a bit. --Tmewett5 (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

I didn't delete anything as of yet, but I'd still be interested in cleaning up at least the table of contents. This book could be pretty good with some more structure and has some interesting pages on more advanced topics. If no one has an argument against it I would like to start removing outdated reference material and improve the structure and quality of the actually relevant chapters. I guess I will leave this here for a week or two before I start doing something.--Evotopid (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Organization
The organization of the new material on strings is a mess. Why the heck is it placed before the section on Basic Ruby? Why are the sections on "Alternate Quotes", "Here Documents", and "ASCII" separate chapters rather than being subsections of the "Strings" chapter?

--OinkOink 23:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Exactly. I warned the user doing all this that some of his/her creations were a bad idea, but nothing stopped. It would be nice if some others came in and started correcting it all. I did once and was reverted, so this user may not take it easily. If such an edit war continues, bring it to my or another admin's attention and we will try to resolve it. This book is heading in a bad direction. -within focus 23:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if it isn't time to put in some additional structure to the "Getting Started" section. There are really three or four big headings here:


 * "Getting Started" includes installing, writing scripts as files, running scripts
 * "Baby Steps" (insert better name here) includes the "hello world" example and a whirlwind 2-3 chapter tour of what Ruby is about including some OO
 * "More Depth" (again, insert better name here) is a more methodical one-chapter-per-topic coverage, enough for your average programming task.

Then the intermediate section is an alacarte of self-contained topics, and the language reference for more details. Yes, I know this structure follows Pickaxe pretty closely.

-- Marburg 23:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Examples
Would those who are working on this project mind putting exercises at the end of sections so that people like myself who are learning the language could practice implementing some programs? Thank you very much for your time, and the tutorial has taught me a lot already.

Sincerely, Eric Scrivner

Tutorial
I once started a tutorial on Ruby. It's right here:

http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/ruby/0.3/index.html

If any of this content is useful for this Ruby Wikibook feel free to take it. I have alread released the tutorial as GNU FDL, so it should be compatible with this Wikibook. But I'm happy to make it public domain if necessary.

I wish I had time to work on this project, but I'm already leading a large documentation project (oooauthors.org).

Cheers, Daniel Carrera.

Naming policy
You might want to consider the WB:NP. You current naming convention is depreciated and has several disadvantages - like it has no navigational links. Also you worthy effort is neiter considered a book nor a section inside a book. See wikistats which implements an exstensive book and section detector.

--Krischik T 07:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll be converting this book today. -within focus 17:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * All the moves and re-organization is now done. Inter-linking within the book still needs significant work. Some double redirects might still exist and there aren't any navigation headers within pages two levels down or lower. -within focus 18:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Ruby Prog?
Supriya, the name "Ruby Prog" is inconsistent with other programming books on Wikibooks. For example:


 * Ada Programming
 * C Programming
 * C++ Programming
 * C Sharp Programming
 * Java Programming

I don't see the reason for the name change. Also, many of the links to the sections broke when you renamed the main page. I'm going to revert.

-- Briand 00:17, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Learning to program
I am currently in discussions about Mr Pine giving his documentation [1] into the public domain. If anyone wants to contact him, his email address is the following chris@pine.fm

Yours sincerely, Edward Rein

Learn to Program

--Herraotic 12:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I have emailed and recently received a conformation mail to say that my proposal of displaying a link to this manual on the official Ruby website was accepted.
 * In all it's glory... http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/


 * --Herraotic 21:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)