Looking for a good Ruby Primer

PhantomBeaker

Hi all,

I'm thinking of getting into Ruby (not Ruby on Rails - just plain Ruby) so I figure a good primer might be in order.

To be honest I'm looking for something a lot like Dive Into Python (www.diveintopython.org). In other words it'd be useful to have something that:
1/ Assumes previous programming experience, so it doesn't get too bogged down in details about what a variable or function is.
2/ Shows the cool things of Ruby up front
3/ Highlights Ruby's core philosophies (i.e. Dive Into Python tried to do things in a "pythonic" way) - I figure there's no use in learning it if I'm just going to treat it like python or perl.
4/ Is preferably free... (not a big one)

So, does anyone have any recommendations - i.e. I'm not looking for a load of google links, I'm looking for what people reckon are good ones that don't assume the reader is a newbie to programming in general, and also don't read like just a load of APIs. To be honest, most of the links to docs from the Ruby page tend to either read like newbie pages, APIs, or are links to amazon.

So can anyone help?

Aoife

dlofnep

Am interested in Ruby myself.. I've been looking at their online manual. I find the syntax changes and lack of conventions weird to adapt to!

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/

NullZer0

Get the "Pickaxe"