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Comment by mikemaccana | Hacker News Reader

There was an unapproved translation before, IIRC. I guess this is out because the adapter asked Zed's permission first and kept the copyright?

If so, I'm cool with that. Zed can be a firestarter, but this shows he's cool with others contributing something provided they do it the right way.

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Yes, exactly. Rob asked permission, and did a good job doing the translation. My problem with the other attempt was it was half-assed, done without permission, and then left to rot so I had to field frustrated students asking me when it'd be done.

This isn't quite idiomatic ruby, but I think it'll be a good kick-starter for someone who knows nothing, and I'm looking to get people to help mold it to be better.

How can we help? I can't find the source for this on Gitorious.

Edit: nvm, it's here folks:

https://gitorious.org/learnrubythehardway/learnrubythehardwa...

Cheers!

The repo is here: https://gitorious.org/learnrubythehardway/learnrubythehardwa...

The main thing is, help improve the ruby code with the least number of changes. I'll have a guide written up today for folks who want to help.

Anyone doing a Perl version or a !GASP! Tcl version?

A Perl version would be good, but given that Modern Perl (http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/) is a fairly recent release, I see many people just pointing newbies towards it since it's very much up to date.

This is probably another unapproved translation as zed said his book was meant for teaching python and we need substantial changes for ruby.

The other book basically translated the code from python to ruby while keeping much of the text the same I don't know if this is the case with this one.

It's approved - check the domain (same as LPTHW)

http://twitter.com/#!/zedshaw/status/99153296811507712

Uh, given that Zed tweeted this out, and it's up on the learncodethehardway.org domain, this at least has Zed's tacit blessing.

I don't know at that point what you mean by "unapproved"

This looks like an approved translation to me:

http://learncodethehardway.org/

Also, from the linked page:

The prose in this translation is nearly 100% identical to the Python version with the exception of a few paragraphs that have been modified to be relevant to Ruby. All of the code exercises and required libraries have been completely adapted for Ruby. In other words, Zed did all the really hard work.

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