Reading "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"

I am reading Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. I can't believe that they use this as a textbook for an introductory course at some schools. It's really a pretty hard book. I think I am going to have to skip a lot of the exercises and material if I want to finish the book in a sort of timely manner. A free online copy of the book is available. I'm reading that version right now, but I think I will buy it eventually. (If you look at the Amazon comments you will see that Peter Norvig and Paul Graham highly recommend this book.)

Paul Graham's Strategy for ViaWeb

This is what I claim Paul Graham's winning strategy for ViaWeb.

"We were a tiny startup, programming as hard as we could in order to put technical barriers between us and our competitors." -Paul Graham in "Beating the Averages" article

Wall Street Programmer

Wall Street Programmer is a blog by a Wall Street Programmer. He describes it as "Thoughts, insights and justified profanity from a Wall Street Programmer" which is a good description. His posting title "Finding a Programming Job on Wall Street" is an example of some of the great postings he has.

How to learn Ruby

Recently, I have been trying to learn Ruby. In case anybody else is trying to learn Ruby here is what I think is the easiest way to learn Ruby without buying a book.

1. Read the book "Programming Ruby" to get the syntax down. The first version of "Programming Ruby" is available online for free. (The second version which is the most up to date version you have to pay for.)
2. Read the online book "Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby" for coding examples.

I don't mean that you should read either in it's entirety, but you can jump back and forth between the books. They seem to go through the material in pretty much the same order. The "Programming Ruby" book seems better at describing the syntax. "Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby" seems to be better at helping you remember it.

It took me about 1.5 weeks to learn Ruby up to the pointt where the books start talking about metaprogramming. And I think I am stopping at this point because I have decided I feel like refreshing my Python right now.