Ruby

Ruby is
.... script language.
    .... genuine object-oriented.
        .... so simple and easy to learn.
            .... designed to make programmers happy.

Learning a programming language usually from pick up a book and read it throughly. Amazon website is a good place to find book that you need. Type 'Ruby' keyword on the search will came out all relevant results for you, simple and quick. Besides that, you also can refer to users' reviews on each book in order to pick up a book suit to your taste. For me as a beginner, my favorite books are

• The Ruby Programming Language, by David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto - This book is GREAT. This book is covered every single detail about Ruby's grammar and syntax. By the way, Yukihiro Matsumoto (a.k.a Matz) is the creator of Ruby. Thanks to him for come out this powerful and easy to use script language.
  
• Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, by Dave Thomas, Char Fowler, and Andy Hunt - I like this book because it covered some information that the previous book didn't. And it also contains the standard libraries section which I refer it most of the time.
  
• The Ruby Way: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming, by Hal Fulton - As the book's title described, this book contains information about applications of Ruby language on different fields with at least one solution you can pick up. This book quite useful to me whenever I hit a "dead-end".
  
• Best of Ruby Quiz (Pragmatic Programmers), by James Gray - This book is my favorite. It contains 25 different quizes. Each one with more than one solution which given by challengers around the world. You also can refer on this website http://rubyquiz.com/ for more quizes. By the time I wrote this post, the website already contains 156 quizes!

Enough for the Ruby's books recommendations. Now, I am going to write a Ruby script to perform a trivial task. The task is to retrieve Ruby's book cover images from Amazon website and save them into computer.

...OMG! How am I going to attach the code inside the blog...

This script will go through the Amazon website's search results on keyword "Ruby" on Computer and Internet section page by page, then downloads every book cover's image with title contains words "Ruby" or "Rails" into a folder named "ruby_books_cover".

Here is the list of Ruby books:

Ruby in Rails Books (55/95):

1. Advanced Rails
2. Advanced Rails Recipes: 84 New Ways to Build Stunning Rails Apps (Pragmatic Programmers)
3. Agile Testing with Ruby and Rails
4. Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition
5. Ajax on Rails
6. Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional
7. Beginning Rails: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)
8. Beginning Ruby on Rails (Wrox Beginning Guides)
9. Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional (Rails)
10. Beyond Rails with Capistrano: Managing Production Systems with Ruby, Python, Perl and More
11. Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications
12. Building Dynamic Web 2.0 Websites with Ruby on Rails
13. Deploying Rails Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide (Facets of Ruby)
14. Developing Facebook Platform Applications with Rails
15. Enterprise Rails
16. Flexible Rails: Flex 3 on Rails 2
17. Foundations of RSpec: Behavior-driven Development with Ruby and Rails (Foundations)
18. Hacking with Ruby: Ruby and Rails for the Real World
19. Head First Rails: A learner's companion to Ruby on Rails
20. Learning Rails (Learning)
21. Practical JRuby on Rails Web 2.0 Projects: Bringing Ruby on Rails to Java (Expert's Voice in Java)
22. Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects (Practical Projects)
23. Practical Rails Projects (Expert's Voice)
24. Practical Rails Social Networking Sites (Expert's Voice)
25. Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails (Expert's Voice in Open Source)
26. Pro Active Record: Databases with Ruby and Rails (Pro)
27. Professional Ruby Collection: Mongrel, Rails Plugins, Rails Routing, Refactoring to REST, and Rubyisms CD1 (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
28. Professional Ruby on Rails (Programmer to Programmer)
29. Rails Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))
30. Rails Pocket Reference
31. Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers)
32. Rails Solutions: Ruby on Rails Made Easy (Solutions)
33. Rails for Java Developers
34. Rails for PHP Developers (Pragmatic Programmers)
35. Rails in a Nutshell
36. Rails: Up and Running
37. RailsSpace
38. RailsSpace Ruby on Rails Tutorial (Video Training) (LiveLessons)
39. RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
40. Ruby On Rails Bible
41. Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers
42. Ruby on Rails
43. Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics
44. Ruby on Rails Enterprise Application Development: Plan, Program, Extend
45. Ruby on Rails For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
46. Ruby on Rails Power!: The Comprehensive Guide (Power!)
47. Ruby on Rails Web Development
48. Ruby on Rails Web Mashup Projects
49. Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers
50. Ruby on Rails for PHP and Java Developers
51. Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
52. Rubyisms in Rails, Digital Shortcut
53. Simply Rails 2
54. The Art of Rails (Programmer to Programmer)
55. The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

Ruby Books (40/95):

1. Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)
2. Best of Ruby Quiz (Pragmatic Programmers)
3. Design Patterns in Ruby (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
4. Enterprise Integration with Ruby
5. Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You
6. FXRuby: Create Lean and Mean GUIs with Ruby (Pragmatic Programmers)
7. From Java to Ruby: Things Every Manager Should Know (Pragmatic Programmers)
8. Game Programming with Python, Lua, and Ruby (Game Development)
9. JRuby Cookbook
10. Learning Ruby (Learning)
11. Making Use of Ruby
12. Mongrel: Developing, Extending and Deploying Your Ruby Applications (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
13. Mongrel: Serving, Deploying and Extending Your Ruby Applications, Digital Shortcut
14. Objektorientierte Programmiersprachen: Einführung und Vergleich von Java - C++ - C# - Ruby
15. Practical Ruby Gems
16. Practical Ruby Projects: Ideas for the Eclectic Programmer (Books for Professionals by Professionals)
17. Practical Ruby for System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source)
18. Pro Ruby (Pro)
19. Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide
20. Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition
21. Programming With Ruby VTC Training CD
22. Raven: Scripting Java Builds with Ruby
23. Regular Expression Pocket Reference: Regular Expressions for Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, C, Java and .NET (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))
24. Ruby Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))
25. Ruby Developer's Guide
26. Ruby In A Nutshell
27. Ruby Phrasebook (Developer's Library)
28. Ruby Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))
29. Ruby Programming for Medicine and Biology (Jones and Bartlett Series in Biomedical Informatics)
30. Ruby Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner)
31. Ruby by Example: Concepts and Code
32. Ruby in Practice
33. Ruby: The Programming Language
34. Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide
35. Sams Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days (Sams Teach Yourself)
36. The Ruby Programming Language
37. The Ruby Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
38. The Ruby Way, Second Edition: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)
39. The Well-Grounded Rubyist
40. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts: Useful Scripts that Solve Difficult Problems
    

Ruby is more valuable than a ruby. Ruby is priceless, and price-less too!