Link Details

If someone wants to hate a book, let 'em. The logic behind this post is that People liked the Pickaxe until Zed Shaw said it was bad. Then former admirers piled on in 'cargo cult' fashion. The post author seems to be trying to lure the cargo cult back to pro Pickaxe status by underscoring their cargo cultishness.

If people's opinions are to be swayed by such arguments either way, they hadn't put to much thought into the matter to begin with. But regarless, people's opinions are entitled to change, especially once they've had other books with which to compare the Pickaxe.

I liked some parts of the pickaxe book, it helped me transition from Java. But I don't know that its the best resource for someone learning Ruby.
,

I agree entirely. I started learning Ruby through the Pickaxe, but since then, I read blogs, DZone, etc., and now rely almost entirely on http://www.ruby-doc.org/ and O'Reilly's Ruby Pocket Reference. Had I not known programming previously with C++ and Java, I don't think the pickaxe book would have been as useful, however.

Whoa, I was definitely *not* trying to make everyone "pro-Pickaxe". I certainly can't do that by myself. I just wanted to point out that before Zed's rant, I had rarely heard a negative comment about this book. After the rant, I read a whole lot of them. I don't think a lot of people had their negative feelings bottled up or something for so long, only to unleash them when a high-profile name came out and said it first. Other (and admittedly better) Ruby books have been out for a while - why didn't everyone bash the Pickaxe book then?

Like I wrote in the post, I don't think Pickaxe is the "be all to end all" Ruby book. I definitely think "The Ruby Way" is a better book, overall. I can't speak for any other Ruby book, as these are the two Ruby books I've read thus far, but they're more than enough to teach me most anything about Ruby. My point of this blog post was to simply state what I've been seeing, nothing more.

You said: I don't think a lot of people had their negative feelings bottled up or something for so long, only to unleash them when a high-profile name came out and said it first.

Actually, that's precisely true in my case. As I have both a competing book, and the most popular weblog in the Ruby sector, it was a politically correct decision for me not to bash the Pickaxe, but I did so after Zed's outburst simply because a big outburst is a good way to seep out true opinions in the backchannel ;-)

The Pickaxe is to be applauded for being still the only true Ruby "reference" book, but it's still not a particularly good book overall and a major motivation for mine as it's next to useless for beginners.

I love the PIckAxe though I do find myself referencing Hal Fulton's "The Ruby Way" more often. Agile Web Dev with Rails is a shitty book and I fully agree w/ Zed in that respect.