Brian Marick learned Ruby in 2001 because Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, original authors of Programming Ruby, wouldn’t let him off a shuttle bus until he said he would. He’s been programming in it ever since, and he’s made a special effort to teach it to software testers. His previous book is Everyday Scripting with Ruby, which began as a tutorial for those very testers.

He’s not a Ruby programmer by trade. He makes most of his money as a consultant in the Agile methodologies. (After getting off the shuttle bus, he was one of the authors of the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”.)

RubyCocoa brings together two enthusiastic development communities. Ruby programmers will tell you how productive they are with just the right amount of code. Cocoa developers know the importance of a clean, intuitive interface.

Now, through RubyCocoa, the joy of Cocoa meets the joy of Ruby.

This is a book for the Ruby programmer who’s never written a Mac app before. Through this hands-on tutorial, you’ll learn all about the Cocoa framework for programming on Mac OS X. Join the author’s journey as this experienced Ruby programmer delves into the Cocoa framework right from the beginning, answering the same questions and solving the same problems that you’ll face.

Together you’ll build a single application that threads throughout the book, and it’s not a toy. You’ll cover topics that may not be the flashiest parts of Cocoa, but they’re ones you’ll need to know to create robust, feature-rich applications for yourself. And you’ll learn more than just Cocoa and RubyCocoa, you’ll get first-hand effective agile development practices. You’ll see test-first development of user-interface code, little domain-specific languages that take advantage of Ruby features, and other Rubyish tricks.

At the end of the book, you’ll be ready to write a real Mac OS X application that can be distributed to real users.