Friday May 27, 2005
The beta edition of “Agile Web Development with Rails” (AWDwR) was released yesterday and while it’s still in a rough state it is easy to see that this will be one of the books to recommend people when they’re asking about Rails. But then again, I wouldn’t expect otherwise from the Pragmatic Programmers.
The book starts out in the beginner end, giving you a good introduction to Rails and the mindset behind it. Experienced Rails developers will probably want to skim through this chapter fairly fast.
The book, like Rails, is centered around “getting your project done” where all of the examples are centered around something you’d do in your real web developer life, with plenty of conceptual information along the way.
The “Building an Application” chapter takes you through the path of building a fairly simple yet perfectly usable shopping site from start to finish, while still keeping it on a beginner/intermediate level.
The “Rails in depth” chapter provides plenty of information about all the parts that make up Rails; from the ActiveRecord library throughout the Action* libraries, the AJAX parts, securing your Rails application and finally deploying it.
This being a beta book there’s a few sections here and there which will say “Awaiting some paperwork” and the like, but overall the book looks to be smashing for those who want to get upclose with Rails. I’d consider myself very experienced with Rails (having used it since September 2004), but I still managed to find this book interesting, if you haven’t invested in it already you should run, don’t walk, to the Pragmatic Programmers.