Beginning Ruby is a thoroughly contemporary guide to this powerful object-oriented language. It s one of the only guides aimed at both the novice programmer as well as experienced developers who are new to Ruby. The book starts by explaining the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters builds towards creating a genuine Ruby application. The book then explains key Ruby principles, such as classes and objects; projects, modules and libraries; and other aspects of Ruby such as database access. In addition, Ruby on Rails is covered in some depth and the book s appendixes provide essential and long-lasting reference information.