Brenton Wejrowski said
I started out buying Agile web Dev with Rails http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Web-Development-Rails-Third/dp/1934356166/ and wasn't learning much.
This book helps you get the big picture. He explains in detail how to do things, then shows you how its done. He wants you to see the big picture before you do anything. He even shows you errors you may get and how to fix them. There's an awesome intro to Ruby and to the Unix Terminal that was very helpful. I understood everything before I built it (as opposed to building it and briefly explaining what's going on).
Evan said
It's all in the title. This is simply the best introduction to Rails. Great to work through, well written, and a satisfying result.
L. Paredes said
While this book doesn't have all the details of Ruby, it does a great job of explaining Ruby on Rails. The writing is easy to follow and so far I have really enjoyed reading it. Another good point is that it's up to date. I am not sure how useful this book will be for me in the future as my RoR skills become more advanced.
Kevin Judd said
I was working through a free copy of version one when version two came out. Wanting the latest explanation, I purchased this book, and am very satisfied. The author has a clear, easy to follow style. If you are looking for a reference, or a tutorial on just Ruby, this is not your book. But there are many excellent Ruby tutorials and cheet sheets available on line.
To me, the fact that this is not focused solely on Ruby makes it perfect for developers with experience in some similar languages; Perl, Java, etc.; for whom much of the Ruby syntax will come quite naturally after a brief intro.
The well designed Rails framework, though, requires deeper explanations, and this book shines in this department.
Rob S. said
Patrick gives a terrific intro to Ruby and RoR through the book-long creation of a sample application from scratch to something pretty impressive. While I'm far from a Ruby or Rails expert, with the background and experience obtained from SR2, I'm able to easily fly through 'the' reference books and find what I need (The Rails Way, The Ruby Way).
What I didn't expect to find and did!
- Introduction to Ruby
- Introduction to OOP
- Such a strong focus on testing (though not TDD, hence the 4 stars)
- A full chapter on debugging and performance analysis! (yes!!)
Here's why you need to buy this book:
- Consolidated Rails 2 information, one of the only of its kind that gets consistently good reviews.
- Pauses in the ride to introduce important concepts like REST, rather than just telling you to do something without giving you the background to understand why Rails 2 is focused on resources.
- Conversational writing style; easy to read and understand. Unlike the book on Flash I have, you won't have to read things twice or wonder what the heck you're supposed to be doing with an example.
Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase and have recommended it to anyone I know interested in RoR.
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