Learning Ruby

So last week, and over the weekend, I've been playing around with Ruby. I'd like to learn a bit about Rails, having been given a very brief overview of rake, and having heard all of the buzz.

Well, I went away with Wife for the weekend (she had this conference/retreat thing to go to), an while I took my laptop, I didn't want to pay extra for a net connection in my hotel room. Yeah, I'm cheap. So I went looking for stuff to download to play/learn with. Alas, it seems that the Rails docs are either non-free PDFs or online in Wiki form, and not having time enough to wget what I needed, I went with plan B.

There are plain-Ruby PDFs out there, most notably Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. The Poignant Guide reads like Douglas Adams having a fever dream, but the Ruby content is good, and seems quite appropriate for beginning programmers, moreso than just beginning Rubyists, but overall is a good read. (At present, I'm on p. 93, picking out the gems (yes, pun intended)).