Yeah, I think a better way is to just pick some software or project you care about and dive right in. The books mentioned in the articles are all fine, but with

Yeah, I think a better way is to just pick some software or project you care about and dive right in. The books mentioned in the articles are all fine, but without a goal and lots of experimentation, reading books won't make you great at anything. That said, picking a Ruby/Python project first and picking up some of the topics mentioned in the article on the way is certainly not a bad thing.