Positive Impressions of "Agile Web Development with Rails—Second Edition"
by tdaxp ~ June 6th, 2007
I’m embarking on a new project. Eventually, I hope, it will tie together with Coming Anarchy, the Wary Guerrilla Wary Student projects, as well as some other stuff. For this stage, though, I get to put my computer science experience to use by learning the hip new development platform: Ruby on Rails.
At first Ruby on Rails is — scary. The tutorials I found online weren’t much help. Happily, a fellow student who is also involved and knows more than I do suggested Agile Web Development with Rails—Second Edition. The book is amazingly good.
The book starts right-off with useful information about getting a development system up and running. Then a great “hello world” program which emphasizes Ruby on Rails usability from both the programmer’s and the end-user’s standpoint. The chapter ends with logical, simple tasks to aid procedural memorization.
I haven’t finished the book yet (far from it), and I haven’t begun on the main project either. But so far this book is an outstanding resource.
Pathogenic load reduces...
June 6th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I've been wanting to sit down and learn Rails for over a year now, but as I have no programming background and no free time I thought it would take too long. I look forward to any future reviews of the book and the framework.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Younghusband,
I went through the second substantive chapter today. The way ROR takes over the database is interesting, convenient — and mind blowing (for this perl programmer). Very cool.
June 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Hi Dan,
Mrs. Z would like to know if RoR is a content management system like JOOMLA ?
(whatever the hell that is- LOL!)
Hey – will you be staying in DC or Alexandria come July ?
June 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Actually it's a “web application framework” vaugely similar to asp.net from microsoft.
June 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I'm not sure what the best way to describe Ruby on Rails is — it's almost a system to develop content management systems. It's a revolution beyond perl, php, or asp, I know that much.
The book describes RoR as a Model-View-Controller [1] System, though I'm new to that concept as well.
On DC: No idea! What do you suggest?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller#Perl