Will said
Three stars = five stars for the author and 0 stars for the editor.
This would be a fine introduction to Rails: not too much, not too little, just enough to get you up and running with a nice toy application. However, the sample code simply will not run as presented in the book. This is bad for a book that is essentially a single project.
Some of the problems are inevitable. Method names got changed in later versions of Ruby. This is not the fault of the author. But along with the little annoying mistakes in sample code, there are some real boners -- for instance, chapter tabs that read 1, 2, 3, 6, ...
Did anyone look at the galley proofs?
On the other hand, although working through the errors is frustrating, it can be instructive. You will get familiar with http://api.rubyonrails.org/ and the forums a little sooner than you would expect with a beginner book.
Torbu said
I can only warn you not to use this book to start learning Ruby on Rails! First of all, you'll have a lot of trouble using the examples with Ruby on Rails 2.0 or higher, unless they've come out with an updated edition of this book. Ruby on Rails 2.0 has some significant changes incorporated from its predecessors that will not work with the examples in this book.
This book walks you through an example that creates basically a simple web application similar to craigslist, but it leaves a lot of relevant information unaddressed. I used to develop pretty good solutions in C and C++ about 10 years ago and now I thought I could use this experience to get into Ruby on Rails fairly easy, but this book just didn't do it for me. It doesn't provide enough background information tying everything together and connecting the dots. And just walking somebody through a list of examples simply doesn't do it. There's more to teaching then documenting a few code examples!
Grubesteak said
I really enjoyed this book.
The code was great. The example application works well and the writing is short yet concise. I really don't have much to say, except that this book was an excellent introduction to learning Rails.
I couldn't give it five stars, however, because the book's web page didn't have an errata. Yes, the code was extremely clean, but Friends of Ed should have included that anyway.
Christopher Cachor said
I saw this book in the store the other morning and picked it up, paged through the chapters, then took it straight to the register. It's probably the best beginners book for rails and tackles the most common things you would do with a website (CRUD, userauth, uploads, etc). The author wrote this for people who might have played around with other scripting languages and know some html but are intimidated by a 400 page O'Reilly book. Those books are great, but not so much for beginners. The book is reassuring and shows off the power of rails really well. You could literally pick it up Friday night, start going through everything and finish it Sunday night and have a pretty good idea of how to make rails apps and start extending them. I hope the author follows up with another book that builds off of this one because it is truly the best rails beginner books I've come across.
Daniel J. Mccormick said
I'm trying to decide if I want to begin programming on Python or Ruby, and Rails Solutions looked very attractive. It offers the reader the ability to create web apps without prior programming knowledge. (I already have some knowledge of PHP. Perl & Python.) Chapter 1 was very good, as it explained the concepts behind Rails--especially the Class-View-Model structure. And I was encouraged by the many screenshots taken from Mac OS X instead of Windows. (Too many books don't give a thought to a platform other than Windoze.)
Unfortunately, the OS X installation directions are horrible. The "Semi-Automatic" installation method requires you to download a script from the Friends of Ed website. Someone forgot to tell that to the webmaster; it's nowhere to be found! Moreover, the support forums have users who were asking for help in finding the script, and are left wanting. (Someone suggested using an alternate installation method from the hivelogic site. Pity that doesn't work either!!)
Even worse is when you try to install using the manual method. I get error messages when trying to install readlines from Terminal. The only option left is to use a program called Locomotive, but the book's examples appear to rely primarily on using the manual method instead of Locomotive.
Life is too short for this kind of aggravation over installation. Django is looking better after this bad experience.
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