The central theme of this book, to me: programming should be fun. Have fun. The Poignant Guide is how I learned Ruby and remains my favorite technical book. If

The central theme of this book, to me: programming should be fun. Have fun. The Poignant Guide is how I learned Ruby and remains my favorite technical book. If you're at all curious about Ruby as a language, spend some time reading the first few pages (or just browse the comics). There's much more to Ruby than Rails - if you've no interest in web dev, or just want to hack around, you will be right at home.