Programming Ruby is a book about the Ruby programming language by Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas (programmer)

Dave Thomas is a computer programmer and author/editor. He has written about Ruby.Dave and partner Andy Hunt wrote The Pragmatic Programmer and run The Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company.Dave Thomas lives in Flower Mound, Texas...

 and Andrew Hunt

Andy Hunt (author)

Andy Hunt is a writer of books on software development. Hunt co-authored The Pragmatic Programmer, six other books and many articles,...

, authors of The Pragmatic Programmer

The Pragmatic Programmer

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master is a book about software engineering by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, published in October, 1999.Characteristics of a Pragmatic Programmer: The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (ISBN 0-201-61622-X) is a book about software...

. In the Ruby community, it is commonly known as "The Pickaxe" because of the pickaxe on the cover. The book has helped Ruby to spread outside Japan.

The complete first edition of this book is freely available under the Open Publication License

Open Publication License

Open Publication License is a license open publications created by the Open Content Project, which now recommends using one of the Creative Commons licenses....

 v1.0, and was published by Addison-Wesley

Addison-Wesley

Addison-Wesley was a book publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, best known for its textbooks and computer literature. As well as publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributed its technical titles through the Safari Books Online e-reference service...

 in 2001. The second edition, covering the features of Ruby 1.8, was published by The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC in 2004.

An updated version covering Ruby 1.9 is now available from The Pragmatic Programmers.

External links

• First edition (for online reading) at RUBY-DOC.ORG
• Second edition at The Pragmatic Programmers