The Rails 3 Way - Review

Author: Obie Fernandez & Friends

You may ask yourself why you need this GIGANTIC book especially having already purchased The Rails Way. I’m here to tell you to shell out the clams and pick this up! There you go, that is my review. Oh, did that not convince you? OK… let me go into a little bit more detail.

First off let it be known that I started out this read with a review copy from my favorite user group ChicagoRuby. I enjoy getting the book knowledge at the insanely small cost of a book review. Really go check out your local user groups for similar deals! Anyway, I mention that because after enjoying the book so much I went and purchased a kindle edition so I could have it along with me all the time (the code written in this edition is very easy to read).

Not enough yet? OK. Have you read Obie’s first attempt in The Rails Way? Me too. I thought it was informative but just seemed like the Ruby on Rails API in printed form. I feel in this new edition there is a great deal not only rewritten for all the changes in Rails 3 but appears to have more editorial content as well. That’s what I ended up really loving about this book. Yes Obie and friends go through new and old API but also add in scenarios on how and when you’d use them. A bunch are stuff that a seasoned developer would already know but many caught me off guard as things I would have never thought of.

So not only do you get a huge amount of information but it is a somewhat easy read. A book this size is obviously more of a reference material to be used now and later but I found it to be a really easy read. I actually read it straight through to see what really changed about the first edition. Now I don’t recommend that for everyone, it is really made to jump around from chapter to chapter when needed.

With all of that being said… I want to let you know that this is a highly opinionated writing. We should expect that from Obie and the overall Rails community. What I didn’t expect was that the book is even opinionated on the tools that are discussed. Right out of the gate Obie explains that he will not be going over Test/Unit and ERB as they are inferior to RSpec and Haml.

So in closing I want to reiterate that I highly suggest you get this book. Software moves fast especially the Rails API but I feel this book has many core API and development concepts that will be usefully for a while to come. Go pick it up now and tell ‘em Matt sent ya.

Books Publishers Should Take a Pragmatic Hint

I like books from The Pragmatic Bookshelf, I mean, who doesn’t?  I would think not many people especially if you’re in the Ruby/Rails community.  If you haven’t already noticed, I wanted to share a few things i’m thinking every other book publisher should look into.

Did anyone notice a few months back when they started offering the downloading of book in multiple formats?  For readers using ereaders or iphones, this is huge!  Not only do they support pdf but now also have mobi and epub formats available. When reading books at night I was using my ipod touch + the Stanza app + pdf book of choice.  This wasn’t great but it was one of the better ways to get pdf support on the iphone/ipod.  Now with the epub format available as a download in addition to my normal pdf download… I can easily read Pragmatic books at night.

With all of that being said… has anyone noticed that Pragmatic has a fantasticly simple iphone/ipod interface to your bookshelf?  Try it out, you won’t be sorry.  If you don’t currently have a book from your shelf on the iphone/ipod it will load it on using a stanza link.  Once you click the book you want the Stanza app will open and begin to download the epub formatted book for your viewing pleasure.

What I wanted to convey with this post was that accessibility is really king when it comes to your owned media.  Probably ended up sounding more like Pragprog fandom, but was really intended to show what the future could be.  If anyone knows of other publishers doing this same thing or something similar with their media… please let me know in the comments.