"The first section of the Introduction showed me that author
Chris Pine (as far as I know, no relation to the actor playing
James Kirk in the current Star Trek film) is a person after my own
heart. He compares the writing of instructions on making a PB&J
sandwich to writing a computer program. One of my "issues" is
writing good tutorials for the correct audience. The instructions
on how to make a PB&J sandwich differ, depending on if your
audience is a 5 year old child vs. a 35 year old adult, for
instance. I heard something of my own "voice" in those particular
paragraphs, as Pine outlined the set of instructions pretty much
the same way I would.
"Pine almost immediately answered one of my questions (Why
Ruby?) in the Introduction. The answer is completely pragmatic:
"Ruby programs tend to be short". He compared the same task written
in Java and Ruby. Ruby was just a little "blip" compared to the
several lines of code Java required to do the same thing (print
"Hello Word", as if that were inventive). In the "Getting Started"
section, I ignored the instructions for installing a text editor
and Ruby for Windows and Mac, and honed in on Linux. Easy stuff.
Everything was already on my Ubuntu box. Time to move on to the
first lesson."
