I am on a reading binge again. The latest fair consists of three titles, i.e.
Collectively its 1554 pages of technical bliss. Well maybe not so in the case of Ruby. My general impression of Ruby is that it is a relatively undisciplined language. For example a “while” loop functions differently when its code block is delimited by “begin” and “end” verses “(” and “)”. Why? What possible benefit is there in this difference other then to obscure meaning? This coupled with the recent news of Ruby security issues does not encourage me to go beyond reading this book. Actually I will be canceling my Ruby development site.
LINQ and WCF on the other had look quite good.
Although I am not enamored with Ruby, I must say “The Ruby Programming Language” book is well written and easy to read. I most likely will not use the language but will finish the book. Perhaps when finished I will change my opinion of Ruby.
Ramblings of an old computer engineer/developer 
Thanks for the kind words about my book!
Don’t let some of Ruby’s quirks get you down. In my experience, then language really does grow on you. The behavior of the while loop as a modifier of a parenthesized expression is a very strange case. No one uses it in practice, and I think I recall a discussion of it being removed from the language…
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