I happened upon that PDF yesterday on scribd via google. I was pondering between purchasing the $25 PDF edition of Programming Ruby 1.9 (http://www.pragprog.co

I happened upon that PDF yesterday on scribd via google. I was pondering between purchasing the $25 PDF edition of Programming Ruby 1.9 (http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ruby3/programming-ruby-1-9 http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ruby3/programming-ruby-1-9) and this one. I was surprised to see this price, which had apparently been adjusted a few hours prior. I purchased it because it was written by the author of Ruby, was twice as affordable, and because the preview on scribd contained a lot more pages for me to help base my decision on. It also covers Ruby 1.8, as well. The quality of the PDF is immaculate. Only the cover pages are scanned in: the rest of it is glorious vector text and graphics, allowing one to zoom in and out as much as they could want, similar to what I like to do when reading web sites. It's also searchable, which regular books are not. The fact that it's a digital work forces one to scan the book, skipping past parts one recognizes, putting in practice those they don't. Finally, a digital edition enables one to easily copy-paste those parts of code he or she doesn't feel like typing out themselves.