== The short story
Hi folks, I bugged O'Reilly to let me release a sample chapter of my book, and they let me.
So you can now directly download a PDF copy of my "Mastering the Dynamic Toolkit" chapter without having to go through any hoops:
== For a little background on RBP:
This book is aimed mostly at people with a decent technical grasp of Ruby but not a ton of practical experience. The goal is to show how to attack Ruby problems in the way that a seasoned Rubyist might. Though it might not be suitable for raw beginners, intermediate Ruby programmers should be able to learn a lot from the book, and strong Ruby programmers should *enjoy* it. I've put together a great internal review team to help me make sure I reach this goal, and we also have Rough Cuts set up for general feedback.
== For a little background on this chapter
In the PDF I linked above, you'll find all sorts of meta-programming and DSL goodness, if not by name. I try to emphasize how much these 'voodoo' like features can be treated like ordinary Ruby code if you take some care to do things well.
I chose this chapter to release because it's my favorite. Most of the other chapters in the book follow the same general format, though. That means if you like this one, you'll probably enjoy the others as welll.
== Please help me improve the book!
I still have a few weeks to make revisions, so whether you plan on buying the book or not, feel free to offer some feedback. I've also made an agreement with O'Reilly to allow me to release the book under a creative commons license 9 months after publication.
If after reading the chapter you decide you want to see the whole thing and offer some suggestion before it goes to print, please buy a rough cut:
If you want to know exactly what's in the book, you can check out this blog post:
http://blog.majesticseacreature.com/archives/2009.02/whats_in_rbp.html
Anyway, I'll spam the list only twice more, when the book reaches content completeness (in a few weeks), and when it goes to print (hopefully in June). I hope you enjoy it!
-greg
