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Ask HN: Rails 3 book recommendations?

6 points by norova ↗ HN
I've been poking around on StackOverflow looking for quality Rails 3 book recommendations but I've come up empty handed. I'm looking for something more along the beginner side of things, but more advanced book recommendations are welcome to.

I've read Simply Rails 2 from SitePoint and absolutely loved it, but now I'm looking for something more Rails 3-specific.

6 comments

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LeBlanc
http://railstutorial.org is the best Rails 3 intro book I've found. The HTML version is free or you can buy the print edition + screencasts.

Agile Web Development With Rails by Sam Ruby et al. is also good.

bdclimber14
I'd read http://guides.rubyonrails.org since its constantly updated and its breadth of coverage is unsurpassed. However, Agile Web Development with Rails 3 is also good for its depth.
mrchess
I second these guides as they are surprisingly helpful. The blog tutorial seems cliche and done, but it really is a great staple and good place to start in learning the changes that rails3 has brought about.
freddealmeida
I would suggest you start with the core book:

--Agile Web Development with Rails (Fourth Edition)

--Rails Tutorial w. Rails 3 is very good.

--Beginning Rails 3 by Carneiro and Barazi is excellent

--The Rails 3 Way by Fernandez is difficult if not expanding

--Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails by Dix is impressive and thorough

--Rails Antipatterns is a great look at refactoring Ruby

--Refactoring by Fields, Harview, Fowler, Beck is good.

--Metaprogramming in ruby by Perrotta is exciting.

These are specifically Rails 3 (or touch on it). There are many more great books.

I'm also a large fan of peepcode and expect more rails 3 content coming in the following months (weeks?)

Hartl has created a series of videos worth watching (though I have not bought them yet). But if they are anything like his books then you can expect excellent quality for the price.

My suggestion is to look at supporting technologies while you are learning ruby and rails. Such as Jquery, backbone.js or mustache.js which will give you supporting templates.

Also pick up the rspec book and the git book and try to integrate this into your coding practices.

Goodluck

runjake
I learned using railstutorial.org (first the free online version, then bought the dead tree version in order to support the author). Also Peepcode's Meet Rails 3 videos, which actually got me up to speed quickly since I had toyed around with Rails 2 in the past.