Learn Ruby the Hard Way

Zed A. Shaw teaches Ruby to beginners through 52 exercises in this third edition. The method is strict: readers type each program exactly, without copying and pasting, fix their own mistakes and watch the code run, learning along the way how software works and how professional programmers track down errors. Topics run from installing Ruby, variables, strings and files to functions, loops and logic, arrays and hashmaps. It also covers object-oriented programming, with inheritance and composition, modules, classes and objects, as well as project skeleton directories, debugging, automated testing and text processing. The exercises also reach basic game and web development, and the book came with a DVD of more than five hours of video lessons.

Auston Bunsen, a self-taught programmer and CBlocks co-founder, listed it among practical books that gave him skills he could put to use.