Ruby is a simple, elegant language that makes programming feel natural, and Programming Ruby is the book that introduced it to developers around the world. Known as the “Pickaxe” book, this Second Edition by Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt, is both a tutorial and a complete reference. It starts with Ruby’s object-oriented basics, then covers classes, modules, blocks, iterators, exceptions, threads, and the standard libraries. It also shows how to use Ruby in real-world tasks like web programming, database access, and GUI development, and it includes a detailed reference to the language and its built-in classes. Written in the practical, no-nonsense style the Pragmatic Programmers are known for, it’s a guide for beginners who want to learn Ruby and for experienced developers who want to master it.