Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The only book I've used cover to cover
Comment: In all my years of reading, using and reviewing technical books, this is the first title I've read cover to cover, and in so doing actually built the sample application from start to finish. Most other books use a series of disconnected This book was my first foray months ago into the beautiful world of Rails development, and continues to function as the crowned jewel in my reference library anytime I have a question about Rails or Ruby.
The developer that gets the most out of Ruby on Rails is the experienced programmer with a diverse background (expertise in some programming language, database/SQL experience, server administration, etc.). This is the crowd that will appreciate the rapid development features of Rails, abstracting away many of the tedious tasks necessary to build stable, scalable, secure web applications, with a fraction of the code.
Dave Thomas pens a classic tutorial on building a practical e-commerce app, applicable in several diverse scenarios, and certainly helpful in its design of leveraging the capabilities of the web framework. There's also insightful contributions by Rails creator David Heinemeier Hanson, which helps for some of the more niche concerns experienced developer have likening Rails to platforms they may be more familiar with.
Each chapter is fairly succinct, teaching proper Rails software design, coding conventions, and incorporating OOP principles.
The book is essentially presented in three parts: building the sample app; learning best practices development on Rails; and a healthy collection of appendices that introduce Ruby syntax. While I didn't necessarily agree with the book's organization at first glance, it does make sense when you realize just how easy it is to setup powerful, automated systems with Rails learning in such a fashion. You'll get up and running with the easy stuff and then move onto the more advanced topics.
In criticism, I would have liked to see a more robust appendix of Ruby and Rails APIs (at least documenting some of the more popular properties, method and events), as well as a cheat sheet for the common command-line syntax used in setting up apps. I would also have liked to see a little more documentation about using databases other than MySQL, and perhaps a tad more of a discussion on MVC architecture, at least academically. It would have also been nice to dive a little deeper into working with e-mail and some of the more advanced XML features with Rails. True to the framework which is represents, the book does move at a frenetic pace.
But that aside, this is the best, easiest way to learn Ruby on Rails. This will be the best investment you've ever made into the open source market.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The book to buy if you want to learn rails.
Comment: This is a good book, although I do think that they ordered the chapters strangely. Usually when you read a book you learn about how the stuff works and then you learn the application. In this book, however, the authors walk you through developing a website, and then they dive into how the components really work.
I would also recommend you get the ebook if you want to get the most of the book, sadly that seems to cost extra (about $12).
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Comment: I appreciate this book for its engaging introduction to Ruby-on-Rails, and for the agile programming lessons.
A downside is that it seems to have more errata than you'd like; some code doesn't work, and I'm not knowledgable enough in Ruby or Rails to fix it.
Before you buy this first edition, note that the second edition is already out in beta for download, and when you buy the beta, you get all subsequent updates for that edition free.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Playing with Rails? Get this book!
Comment: I've played with web development in PHP, and though I enjoy it, the time required to develop the structure and functionality of a website takes a while. After hearing a presentation on Ruby on Rails, I decided that I would check it out. After perusing many websites, I found it to be very quick in developing the structure, but I had minor trouble with the functionality, mainly because of my unfamiliarity with Ruby.
After acquiring experience with Ruby, this book is a great way to understand the Rails methodology. Don't expect it to teach you Ruby, though; the main focus of the book is the Rails framework and the Agile development process. Be ready to invest in a good Ruby reference along with purchasing this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Technical Book Ever
Comment: This book was the first book that drawed me into Ruby and Rails. There is something alluring about how this book was written, or maybe the sleek programming language (Ruby) and the framework (Rails) themselves are so attractive that I were drawn into it.
This book is one of those rare technical books that is so light to read page after page, after each page, you know you have learn something good. When it is over, you just wish there could be just another chapter.
|
|
|
