Cover of Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

by Why The Lucky Stiff · first published 2005

107mentions
85recommended by
101HN commenters
2007–2026first – last mentioned

84% recommend10% neutral6% critical

Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Mentions per year

150 2007: 3 mentions2008: 8 mentions2009: 11 mentions2010: 15 mentions2011: 6 mentions2012: 6 mentions2013: 4 mentions2014: 5 mentions2015: 5 mentions2016: 1 mention2017: 2 mentions2018: 4 mentions2019: 7 mentions2020: 3 mentions2021: 5 mentions2022: 7 mentions2023: 6 mentions2024: 3 mentions2025: 2 mentions2026: 2 mentions200720172026

What Hacker News says

  • bloopernova · Jul 7, 2023 · Recommends

    Why the lucky stiff wrote a great, poignant guide to Ruby. A lot of people loved it and demanded more from Why. They decided they didn't want to be in the public eye even a little, and wrote a goodbye. I think CLOSURE is that goodbye?

    on “Closure, from Why_ the Lucky Stiff” ↗
  • Luyt · Apr 2, 2011 · Recommends

    Well, with _why the Lucky Stiff's 'Poignant Guide to Ruby' of course ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff One of the developers in the video suggested to learn some Ruby first before diving into Rails.

    on “Learning Ruby and Rails, where would you start?” ↗
  • gerjomarty · Jun 30, 2020 · Recommends

    Navigating to the tutorials section, I discovered to my joy that _why was clearly involved in this in some way. The online book[1] is written by them in their inimitable style. See also _why's other classic Ruby-related book, the Poignant Guide to Ruby[2]. [1]: http://evc-cit.info/cit020/nks.pdf [2]: https://poignant.guide/

    on “Shoes” ↗
  • TrevorBurnham · Jul 10, 2010 · Recommends

    The parent isn't quite as inane a comment as it may seem. It's a reference to Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, a widely beloved introduction to the language that you can read free online at http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ The Ruby ecosystem is very rich. You don't need a $100 course to learn the language, though it might help to provide motivation.

    on “Ask HN: Should I Learn Ruby?” ↗
  • jackowayed · Aug 14, 2010 · Recommends

    I'd get a stronger command of Ruby first. It'll help you, and Ruby is awesome. Rails may not be your thing even if Ruby is. It's probably not the best way to learn Ruby, but the most fun way is definitely reading _why's poignant guide[1]. It's awesome and teaches you pretty well (you can find PDFs and such out there too). Once you're satisfied with your command of Ruby: I'm not really sure what

    on “Ask HN: Suggestions for Starting with Ruby on Rails?” ↗
  • Charuru · Jan 19, 2011 · Recommends

    >Drupal might be ok for initial stages but it probably won't scale as well What is that, hearsay? No, drupal scales fine. Look at the many large sites that use drupal, like the economist, whitehouse.gov and the examiner. For RoR the standard tutorial is: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

    on “Ask HN: Where and how do I start with PHP/Ruby on Rails and JS for my project” ↗
  • seako · Jul 14, 2013 · Recommends

    don't forget _why's (poignant) guide to ruby http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

    on “Conrad Barski's Haskell Tutorial” ↗
  • AdieuToLogic · Sep 9, 2015 · Recommends

    > I didn't know what bad documentation was until I used Ruby. Really? I mean, you probably could have made any other point and have it hold even the slightest amount of water. OK, let's help you out on finding some good documentation on Ruby: http://ruby-doc.com/docs/ProgrammingRuby/ http://ruby-doc.org/ https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guid

    on “Node v4.0.0” ↗
  • GuiA · May 18, 2018 · Recommends

    Shoes was started by why_, who also wrote A Poignant Guide to Ruby. Highly recommended.

    on “Shoes – An easy little GUI toolkit for Ruby” ↗
  • IronBacon · Apr 17, 2019 · Recommends

    Only from skimming the first few pages of "Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby" I wanted to learn Ruby. I didn't checked recently, but I found bizarre (maybe not the right word) how the author one day decided to disappear and nuke his Internet presence. https://poignant.guide/

    on “Land of Lisp (2010)” ↗
  • anon9001 · Nov 7, 2021 · Recommends

    I'm not sure if you're joking or just not familiar with _why, but his book on Ruby is probably his most famous writing: http://www.rubyinside.com/media/poignant-guide.pdf or http://poignant.guide/ It's an incredible work. Ruby is the spiritual successor to Perl, and the niche it filled was to be the "beautiful" programming language. If you don't appreciate _why's guide and the idea of code a

    on “_why's Estate” ↗
  • madanella · Apr 19, 2007 · Recommends

    http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ is one of the most entertaining writings I have read, not just out of technical books, overall. Highly recommended. Rolling On Rails from OnLamp is a very quick and useful tutorial found here: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html This is the easiest and fastest way to get started: http://tryruby.hobix.com/

    on “What is the best RoR book for beginners? Best online resources?” ↗
  • dhotson · Jul 15, 2008 · Recommends

    Oh thanks for the link, that looks pretty cool. For some reason it reminds me of _why's mini dungeon in ruby: http://poignantguide.net/dwemthy/ I used to love writing my own adventure games in QBasic. I found that using stuff like GOTO's was actually a pretty good metaphor for moving between rooms. Now that I think about, an Object Oriented language would make a lot of sense.. these adventure g

    on “Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer” ↗
  • pclark · Jan 15, 2009 · Recommends

    consider ruby on rails : http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/10/13/what_is_rails.... read this : http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ then buy these : http://peepcode.com/products/rails-from-scratch-part-i

    on “ASK HN: (click on link to view question, duh!) Learn web development?” ↗
  • amvp · Feb 16, 2009 · Recommends

    I agree in that I don't think the interview contributed very much, other than to propagate his quirky reputation But reading your comment makes it sound like that's all there is to him - it isn't. I found his book brilliant - the quirkiness in no way made it any less informative or useful, and only made it more enjoyable. I encourage anybody who hasn't read it, or who want's to learn Ruby, to tak

    on “An Interview with _why the Lucky Stiff” ↗

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Focus search
j / k
Next / previous book
Enter
Open focused book
Esc
Close / go back
g h
Go to Home
g t
Go to Top all-time
g m
Go to Most recommended
g r
Go to Rising
g f
Go to For You
?
Show this help