Book Note: Programming Ruby

I'm not going to be reading this straight through, but since it seems to serve as the unofficial manual for Ruby, I'll be referring to it as I start doing my Ruby/Amazon programming. That really is my favorite way to learn a language, build something and look up what you need as you go. Of course, you need a forgiving language with a low initial learning curve, and that seems to fit the profile of Ruby.

The author, Dave Thomas, also wrote the first book on Ruby on Rails. A week or two ago I saw a post from him somewhere saying that his two Ruby books were the most popular on Amazon's computer book list. As an author, I'm always curious how you find a topic that is so hot. Unfortunately, the answer is that you have to start several years before things get hot, and then hope to get lucky. The lesson here is that you can't chase hotness, because you will already be too late. You have to be receptive to new things and follow your dreams when nobudy else is looking. My most succesful technology picks came from being an early adopter, not from being a follower. I don't plan on writing any books on the current crop of Web 2.0 technologies, it is already too late for that, but if I immerse myself in the current wave, something new will come along that I may be early enough with to make some money. In 1995 when I started with the Internet, my friends in the software business kept asking how anyone could make any money from that stuff. My answer was that I didn't know yet, but the best way to find out was to just do it, not to wait until the business models were obvious.