[ADV] Second Edition of Agile Web Development with Rails

ANNOUNCING AGILE WEB DEVELOPMENT WITH RAILS, SECOND EDITION

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails2/

Rails has changed a lot since we announced the first edition of the
book a year ago. DHH says that the 1.1 release “boasts more than 500
fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors.” Who
are we to disagree?

To celebrate the release of Rails 1.1, we’re delighted to announce
the second edition of Agile Web D. with Rails. This is a
major update to the original, and we’re releasing it as a beta book.

So far, we’ve rewritten the Depot application chapters. They now
illustrate new Rails features such as RJS templates for Ajax support
and “has_many :through”. We’ve lost the SQL in favor of migrations,
and even include an rxml example, so we can show off RESTful
interfaces and “respond_to.” It uses the new rake tasks, keeps its
sessions in the database, and generally tries to follow all the
latest Rails programming recommendations (including dropping things
that are likely to become deprecated over time). The testing chapter
supports transactional fixtures, shows new features, and illustrates
the new integration testing framework.

Over the coming months, we’ll be updating the rest of the book. The
Rails core chapters will be revamped to show all the changes to
ActiveRecord, ActionController, and ActionView. The Web2.0 chapter
will be rewritten to illustrate RJS; and the deployment chapter
rewritten to use Capistrano and to show how to set Rails up in
production. All in all, the book will be significantly updated to
illustrate all we’ve learned about writing Rails applications in the
last year.

All this represents a bunch of totally new content—entirely new
chapters and largely rewritten old ones.

Today, we’re releasing this new edition as a beta book. As with all
our beta books, you’ll be able to download updates as we add new
content, and then, after we complete the book, continue to download
changes to this second edition. We anticipate that the book will be
finished in the fall, at which point the paper copies will ship.

However, we’re doing this beta book slightly differently to our
other ones. Rather than releasing just the new content as it becomes
available, we’re instead releasing a hybrid that mixes the new
content with that of the original, first edition. That way you’ll be
able to use the beta book as a complete reference that gets updated
over time. Each chapter is color coded: ones with a gray header are
from the first edition, while those from the second have a red
header.

From May 2nd onwards, if you buy the AWDwR PDF, you’ll be getting
the beta book version. If you want the paper book, you’ll have the
choice of buying the first edition now or buying the second edition
that will ship when it’s ready.

If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book. We’ll be sending you instructions by email over
the next few days. (If you have a spam blocker, we suggest
whitelisting pragprog.com and pragmaticprogrammer.com–you’d be
amazed how often our PDF download e-mails get bounced.)

Visit the book’s page at http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails2
to see samples from the new chapters and check out the changes for
yourself. Be sure to visit the “in-place upgrade” link to see how the
process works.

We’re really excited to be able to offer the most up-to-date
information on the amazing Rails framework. If you’re a Rails
developer, we think you’ll find this book an invaluable companion.

Regards

Dave T.

Great news!

I’ll be ordering a new copy today.

Thanks, Dave!


– Tom M.

That’s great news, but I do think there should be a discount for those
who have already bought the first edition in book form.

This is very good news.

Can I voice a request?

In “Getting Real,” the 37Signals guys advocate that you code the
interface first.

In my personal copy of “Agile Web D. with Rails,” I scrawled
a note to that effect – something like “start here!! design from
templates!!!” – in the chapter on Active V… This was before I ever
saw “Getting Real.”

I can’t remember how I figured it out.

I do remember it took a lot of thinking.

I’ve been making web apps for about a decade. For some reason, I don’t
even remember how, I pulled that insight out of the design, and saw it
validated later in “Getting Real.”

A lot of people who are getting into Rails haven’t been making web
apps for a decade, and a lot of people won’t read “Getting Real.”
(Everybody should, but not everybody will.)

Consequently you can look at me figuring this out and realize that a
lot of other people won’t necessarily have the same insight.

The framework was developed in the context of design-first coding, and
consequently is very well-suited to design-first coding. I think if
you encourage newbies to use a design-first approach, it’ll soften the
learning curve for them, and I also think that if you encourage
experts to use a design-first approach, they’ll produce better work.

My request is that you re-order the chapters, placing the chapter on
Active V. first, the chapter on Active Controller second, and the
chapter on Active Record last.


Giles B.
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org

I’m new to the list and ruby/rails and going through Agile Web
Development with Rails
Forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask, but I can’t seem to get
past an error in the development of Depot with my add_to_cart method.
I’m getting the error “undefined local variable or method
‘product_id’ for #<Cart…”

I’ve compared to the provided source code and I have everything
correct as far as I can tell.
Can someone point me in the right direction to solve this?

Thanks!

-Jim

Hey Jim, you should reference the errata for the section that section of
the
book. Thus, you can find the errata in the following location:

Peace,

-Conrad

On May 2, 2006, at 1:41 PM, Conrad T. wrote:

Hey Jim, you should reference the errata for the section that
section of the book. Thus, you can find the errata in the
following location:

Pragmatic Bookshelf: By Developers, For Developers

If it’s the second edition, or

Pragmatic Bookshelf: By Developers, For Developers

for the first.

Dave

Try restarting your rails server. I vaguely remember running into a
problem
like this myself and I think a restart fixed it. I believe it had
something
to do with the server holding onto a cached model of the Cart class
after I
had made some changes to it…or something like that.

-Brian

My apologies. I should have mentioned that I’m using the first
edition, and that the errata is a bit of a pain to search through.

I’ve tried restarting the server, clearing cookies, everything
mentioned in the errata as far as I can tell.

I can add to the cart, but as soon as I add a second item (either of
the same product id or new product id) I get an error.
I’ll gather my specific error and post that…

Thanks for the help!

On 5/2/06, Joseph K. [email protected] wrote:

I’ll second the request for a discount on the second edition for first
edition buyers (for those that bought from the pragmatic store… I
would have a hard time paying the full price for the new book less than six
months from when I purchased it…

ditto.

I’d be much more likely to buy a different rails book than to pay full
price
for an update of this one - even though I was very pleased with the
first
edition.

On 5/2/06, Joseph K. [email protected] wrote:

I’ll second the request for a discount on the second edition for first
edition buyers (for those that bought from the pragmatic store, it would be
hard to track who bought the book from other sources). Yes, the new edition
has substantial improvements, and I fully believe in supporting all the very
hard work that has gone into this, but I would have a hard time paying the
full price for the new book less than six months from when I purchased
it…

I agree. Short of ripping the cover off my copy, which I purchased at
the local Barnes & Nobel, I don’t know how they’d give a discount for
the first version.

I’ll probably just end up getting the PDF only, so as to not spend
another $50 or so on another copy. Just can’t curl up on the couch as
much…

On May 2, 2006, at 1:50 PM, Chris T wrote:

That’s great news, but I do think there should be a discount for
those who have already bought the first edition in book form.

If I buy a car in 2006, I do not get a discount when the 2007 model
comes out. If I buy a regular TV, I do not get a discount when HD
(or whatever) is the standard. If I buy a 2GHz processor, I do not
get a discount when the 4GHz comes out. If I buy a 15" macbook pro,
I do not get a discounted upgrade when the 17" comes out for the same
price! Ergo, I should not expect to get a discount when a new
edition of a book comes out. New happens, be grateful there is a
second edition, and that Dave is busting his hump to keep the book up
to date with the fast pace of Rails. It’s $23, not the $2300 or
$23000 we get shafted on every year on the afore mentioned products.

Everyone, bow your heads and pretend to be serious.

-s

On May 3, 2006, at 12:08 AM, Scott B. wrote:

products.
Well said!

+1

-Brian

Hey, I second what Scott said. Furthermore, I’m supporting the
efforts of the authors who are keeping this gem, ‘Agile Web
Development with Rails’, up to date by purchasing it. People on this
list say that there’s not enough documentation. Guess what? Here’s
some documentation that happens to be in the form of a book. What
would you do if this book wasn’t updated? You would have to rely upon
getting all that valuable information from the internet. I don’t know
about you but I like having a desk reference that I can refer to time
and time again. When I go into a bookstore, I don’t see many books on
Ruby and/Rails but the few that I do see are simply execellent. I
couldn’t and wouldn’t say that about the other languages as a whole
eventhough they dominate the bookshelves. In short, please support
the efforts of the authors if you can to make sure that we see
continued development of Ruby and Rails texts.

Peace,

-Conrad

I’ll second the request for a discount on the second edition for first
edition buyers (for those that bought from the pragmatic store, it would
be
hard to track who bought the book from other sources). Yes, the new
edition
has substantial improvements, and I fully believe in supporting all the
very
hard work that has gone into this, but I would have a hard time paying
the
full price for the new book less than six months from when I purchased
it…

Scott B. wrote:

book comes out. New happens, be grateful there is a second edition,
In the case of the PDF version I don’t think they’re valid analogies.
For a PDF book the cost of reproducing and delivering the goods is tiny
fraction of the development costs. A better analogy would be software,
for which upgrade discounts are usually offered.

and that Dave is busting his hump to keep the book up to date with the
fast pace of Rails. It’s $23, not the $2300 or $23000 we get shafted
on every year on the afore mentioned products.

I found the First Edition great value for money. It saved me a great
deal of time by bootstrapping my Ruby and Rails knowledge, and has
been a very useful reference to the framework. However I would only
buy the full-priced PDF of the Second Edition in recognition of
this value I received from the First Edition. I could not justify
it in relative terms for the new content, particularly now that I
can learn from rawer sources.

But you’re right – $23 is not much in absolute terms. The update would
only have to save you a small amount of time before it payed for itself.


We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

I was actually more convinced that the new edition was worth the
full price
before you said that. As a matter of fact, many car companies offer
“loyalty” incentives where if you already own that make of car, you
get a
discount on your next one. Furthermore, almost every car dealership
accepts
tradeins of previous models for a discount on your new car.

Actually, it’s not a discount. The dealer buys your old car, and you
use the proceeds to help pay for the new car.

How about this: Sell your first edition on eBay, and use the
proceeds (which, as in the case of a used car, will be depreciated)
to help pay for the second edition. There is definitely a market for
used books … just look for a poor college student!

-Derrick S.

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 12:08:38AM -0400, Scott B. wrote:
}
} On May 2, 2006, at 1:50 PM, Chris T wrote:
}
} >That’s great news, but I do think there should be a discount for
} >those who have already bought the first edition in book form.
}
} If I buy a car in 2006, I do not get a discount when the 2007 model
} comes out.

I was actually more convinced that the new edition was worth the full
price
before you said that. As a matter of fact, many car companies offer
“loyalty” incentives where if you already own that make of car, you get
a
discount on your next one. Furthermore, almost every car dealership
accepts
tradeins of previous models for a discount on your new car.

} If I buy a regular TV, I do not get a discount when HD
} (or whatever) is the standard. If I buy a 2GHz processor, I do not
} get a discount when the 4GHz comes out. If I buy a 15" macbook pro,
} I do not get a discounted upgrade when the 17" comes out for the same
} price! Ergo, I should not expect to get a discount when a new
} edition of a book comes out.

There’s a reasonable argument for both sides. It is ultimately up to the
publishers. We’ll buy it, or not, based on our needs and its price.

} New happens, be grateful there is a second edition, and that Dave
is
} busting his hump to keep the book up to date with the fast pace of
} Rails. It’s $23, not the $2300 or $23000 we get shafted on every
year
} on the afore mentioned products.
}
} Everyone, bow your heads and pretend to be serious.

snicker yessir

} -s
–Greg

} _______________________________________________
} Rails mailing list
} [email protected]
} http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
}

Derrick S. wrote:

use the proceeds to help pay for the new car.
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

I agree the new car trade-in is not a discount, but the software analogy
holds up. Also it’s not uncommon for companies to reward past purchasers
with such a discount (call it a loyalty discount, or whatever) a) as a
thank you, and b) because it gives the customer a warm fuzzy feeling and
thus ties them emotionally to the company/brand (increasing likelihood
of further purchases).

As for me, I’ll prob buy the PDF (as a prev poster said, $23 is not a
huge amount in absolute terms, and the first edition was an excellent
book), but prob won’t feel much of that warm fuzzy valued customer
feeling when paying for it. Just my $0.02

I’ve been surprised by the response to this announcement on both this
list and ruby-talk. As a professional having the best tools available
at my disposal is part of what allows me to deliver great value for my
customer. The information provided in Prag books easily saves me
countless hours of searching the net, reading docs and source, trial
and error, etc. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t buy them. I have never
bought a Prag book that didn’t pay many returns in terms of my own
productivity and effectiveness and quite frankly these books would do
so at many times their price.

In the case of Rails, not only is the Prag book good–it is way out in
front. Other publishers are still working on getting their first ed.
in print (though some have PDFs available) and we’ve had the first
edition (in some form) over a year. That year was well worth the $50
and I expect the next to be as well.

I suspect that most on the list are of the same mind, but 'discount ’
is sort of an involuntary reaction that can be difficult to suppress,
but since I do not want my customers to respond to my work this way, I
think it worth suppressing when I am the customer.