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Great RoR Books?

9 points by omnipath ↗ HN
So, I'm biting the bullet. After wondering about the hype of RoR, I've finally came up with a reason to design a site using said technology. The only problem is, when looking for a book to learn off of, there were too many choices!<p>Does anyone have any suggestions for great RoR books, or Ruby books in general?

23 comments

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inklesspen
The Rails Way, by Obie Fernandez. Only RoR book you'll ever need. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321445619/

This book is one of the three in plus's comment; another one his comment mentions is "Ruby for Rails", which will get you up to speed on Ruby as a language. It's a great book; get it too.

ericwaller
"The Rails Way," is by far the best rails book I've seen. As you might gather from the title, this book really aims at teaching the ruby/rails idioms necessary to get the most out of rails.
omnipath
Thanks for the recommendations, guys/girls.
melvinram
Screw the books. All are out of date, except The Rails Way... but that's way too big for my taste.

Check out www.PeepCode.com. Best bang for $9 you can find. You'll probably find these most interesting to begin with:

* https://peepcode.com/products/rails-from-scratch-part-i

* https://peepcode.com/products/rails-from-scratch-part-ii

* https://peepcode.com/products/restful-rails

Another great resource is www.railscasts.com.

PStamatiou
Melvin - you can edit your profile to put in your signature information. It helps clean up these comments substantially. thanks.
JFred
I've been through most of the rails books, at least partway, and none of them is a great programming book. The classic, AWDWR from pragmatic programmers is a bit out of date, otherwise I would recommend it. The "Rails in depth" chapters there are quite useful and could be taken out and used as a reference.

"The Rails Way" is a good book but the online version requires Adobe Digital Editions for the DRM and that interface is a pig. This book is clearly not intended as a first book on Rails, but you'll end up buying it if you do more than one project. There's supposed to be a new version coming out soon, so check out the date of publication.

I started Rails as one project of many, but I don't think that pollutes my fundamental finding: Learn Ruby First. In fact I'd like to put together a book of small Ruby tasks and samples to cover the language. The existing books are narrative-based.

The secret question for all Rails developers is: Should I learn the framework by looking at the source? Or should I code by reading the API docs? I started out as an old-fashioned software-is-a-contract guy and tried to build code by following the docs. The docs aren't good enough. The site 'api.rubyonrails.org' has docs that include source, lacking only an on-screen search box.

Finally, a good IDE that indexes the rails source (and your source) to produce a sort of visual-etags would be very useful. I haven't found one I like. That is, I would like to click on my call to 'number_to_currency' and have it bring up the source code in another window frame. I haven't found a solution I like.

raju
Have you tried NetBeans? It does a decent job of indexing your code as well as rails, and the Ctrl-Click takes you to the definition of most methods (it tends to get a little confused every now and then).
davidw
I don't think that a "current, hot, rapidly changing technology" often makes for a "great book", as great books tend to be classics. Just find something decent to get you up to speed and then follow the situation on line, as what you'll have in two years will make most books irrelevant in any case.

That's not to knock rails at all though, I use it exclusively at this point for web stuff.

rantfoil
The Rails Way is a great reference, but not great for those totally fresh to it.

For total beginners, I recommend Sitepoint's Build Your Own Ruby on Rails book -- http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/

Rails Way is great to fill out your Rails understanding from there, and then I recommend David Black's Ruby for Rails to fill out your Ruby understanding -- it will allow you to do so much more.

snowbird122
A quote from the sales print on the sitepoint book: "The book uses Rails 1.2 — the very latest version of Rails"
rantfoil
Guess they're due for an update. In general, though, I am a big fan of Sitepoint's easy to read style.

A quick look at a what's new in Rails 2.0 will get any rails noob up to speed. I stand by recommending the book, though caution people to make sure they do follow it with Rails 1.2.6 otherwise mass confusion will ensue.

pkrumins
You don't need books. Just start hacking!
wallflower
My advice: Start with AWDWR or another how-to-build-from-scratch book and take their core example (in AWDWR, a online shopping app example) and transmute it into something simple, of the same scope but of a different domain.

The fastest way to learn is by actual coding - fight ennui and boredom by taking the tutorial code and building a toy application of interest to you.

railsfactory
restful rails is a bit of overdose for beginners, I suggest use rails 1.1.6 to get started. agile web development with rails will give you the initial successes. then for spicing use rails recipe, advanced rails recipe, rails cookbook

for implementing full projects in rails 2.0 practical rails projects

for ruby, beginning ruby, ruby cookbook, The Ruby Programming Language