A dog, glorious weather and misc link

18th February was a great day to be in Sedbergh, the weather was glorious. So quiet, bright and promising.

I found a path from the village up onto the surrounding fells and after a walk up-then-down: a bench for a break.

While I was sat in the sun a lady walked past with her dog -

"Come on Ruby!", she shouted. (Honest!)

"Excuse me, did you say Ruby?"

"Yes, that's right." ...

So I showed her the book I was reading:

Olsen's Design Patterns in Ruby.

This must be a sign! So - give that dog a bone!
In between other reading (Drupal!), I keep referring to Chris Pine's Learn to Program and Dave Thomas's Programming Ruby. These two books are excellent, but although I'm only up to the second design pattern Olsen's book has clarified so much already. DPiR's quick intro chapter on Ruby is itself a jewel.

So far the two initial patterns (template and strategy) have also seen Olsen describe other key aspects of Ruby. I'll try and elaborate on this is the near future - Gang of Four - indeed. You see it isn't just scintillating Ruby that has caught my eye, but domain specific languages.