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 Teaches Ruby using Rails January 26, 2008
Thing with a hook
Approaching this book, I wasn't quite sure where the emphasis lay, and who this was aimed at. To be clear then, I recommend this book to an intermediate Ruby programmer, who is interested in using examples from Rails to help cement their learning. It would also probably help to have the vaguest idea of what Rails is, and the sorts of web apps it's useful for. If you're an existing Rails developer, this is a great way to get a better understanding of what's going on, but it's not a tutorial on Rails for a complete newbie, nor does it provide advanced Rails practices.
Unlike many programming books, which focus on procedural programming before building up to classes, RfR is admirably object oriented in focus from the word go. It's quite impressive that conditionals aren't introduced until about 200 pages in. Also notable is the chapter on metaprogramming, which is very good. If you felt a bit short-changed by the coverage of this subject in The Pickaxe, this is much better.
Material on Rails top and tail the book: the first part introduces Rails by building a simple web app, and the final chapters rejig it with enhanced models, views and controllers, based on the Ruby material in the middle.
In short, this is more of a Ruby book than a Rails book, and I was very happy with that. This is well worth getting even if you have no interest in web apps.
 A useful tutorial, but not wholly great. February 1, 2007
Terry Burton (Leicester, UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I'm an experienced Perl and Python programmer and this is the first book on Ruby + Rails that I've picked up. I have to say that I found part 1 of the book (the first 90 of 475 pages) excellent, demonstrating clearly the amount of coding that is avoided by using the Rails framework.
But from then on until part 4 (near to the end) it felt like wading through increasingly thickening treacle with the book making very slow yet unthorough progress through the more common general purpose programming features with frequently repeated bad examples and a awful lot of superfluous "chit-chat"; I can only assume that the author had a hard time fleshing out the main contents to meet the required page count! Here's one of many possible examples from the text that illustrates the point:
"From now on, when you see this notation (in this book or elsewhere), you'll know what it means. (The second example (class method reference using a dot) looks the same as a call to the method, but you'll know from the context whether it's a method call or a reference to a method in a discussion.) // Objects come from classes. If classes are objects, that implies that they, too, come from a class. A class can be created with a call to the class method new of its class. // And what is the class of a class? It's a class called Class. Yes, there's a bit of "Who's on first?" here, but the concept is by no means impenetrable..."
Thankfully, the Rails focused contents toward the end of the book goes a long way towards redeeming the dire middle, and make for quite stimulating reading.
As a Ruby tutorial it is poor. As a Ruby or Rails reference it is also quite poor. But as a Rails tutorial it shines.
A must buy October 26, 2006
Satish M. Talim (Pune, India)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book Ruby for Rails closes the gap between Ruby as a language and Rails as a framework. Each chapter deepens your Ruby knowledge and shows you how it connects to Rails. Every Ruby concept is clearly explained. It is a must .
Good introduction October 21, 2006
Graham Phillips (Cambridge, UK)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is probably the best starting point for anyone considering using Ruby on Rails. David Black introduces both the language and the framework, starting from the beginning. At times his approach can seem pedantic (for example the section "introducing object-oriented programming' on page 97). However, it's probably a good idea for even experienced programmers to read it all, as Ruby differs in some subtle but fundamental respects from other more familiar languages (a class IS an object; objects don't "have methods" they "respond to messages", operators are just "syntactic sugar" for messages, etc.).
Both Ruby (the language) and Rails (the framework) are substantial things, and this book does not cover either in detail. There's no mention of testing, for example, nor of real world deployment, nor Rake nor RDoc. You'll need to spend a lot of time with the online documentation [...] and or get the big books (0974514055 and 097669400X).
There are too many misprints. Not a lot, but each one is annoying. The actual Ruby text is error-free, as it was pasted from a live irb (interactive ruby) session, but occasionally the explanatory text does not match the code. The index is OK but not brilliant, and I kept finding things missing ("flatten", for example, or "//" or "|"). The other annoyance is the author's tendency to keep telling us that, to use Rails, you really OUGHT to learn Ruby. That would be fine in the preface, but he's still preaching the message in later chapters. We don't need to be told; that's why we bought the book! But these are all relatively minor flaws, and I can certainly recommend the book. It offers a solid grounding on which to build your expertise.
 Have Your Cake .... And Eat It! August 31, 2006
DAZ (Manchester, Uk)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is excellent. It helps to teach not only rails but the ruby language that underpins it. Rather than treating them as two separate topics, the book focuses on showing how ruby and rails work together (rails is written in ruby after all...) This helps you to learn the ruby language with a focus on rails development.
It is written in a tutorial format and David Black has a very authorative writing style that is a little dry (i.e. doesn't have any of those silly 'jokes' that many tech authors use).
It starts with the basics of installing ruby and rails and walks you through a small rails application before going into the nuts and bolts of the ruby language. Most of the ruby parts are centered around rails with lots of references to how rails works in the background. This helps to give you a good grounding in Ruby but also helps you to understand rails in depth.
Be aware that it is not a reference book and you would probably be better with Agile Web Development With Rails by the two Davids for Rails reference and The Ruby Pickaxe book by the one David for Ruby reference. Learn to Program by Chris Pine is also worth reading if you have little programming experience and would like to learn Ruby from the start.
I would highly recommend this book to anybody who is starting to develop in rails.
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