Agile Web Development with Rails Second vs Third edition

Rails
1

Hello guys,

I am starting with Rails and I have bought the book “Agile Web
Development with Rails Second”. The book is very good but I’ve found
out already that there are some differences between rails 1.2 and the
current 2.1.

Is it the old edition good enough to learn rails? or should I try to
buy a book based on rails 2.1?

Thanks in advance,

GA

2

The “Beta Book” for Third Edition is suppose to be keep up with the
latest Rails version, which will likely be at least version 2.2 by the
end of the beta cycle.

If you use the Second edition it is recommend to use the version of
Rails used in the book, or the tutorial code will have problems and
you’ll have to deal with that instead of actually learning Rails.

Guillermo A. wrote:

Hello guys,

I am starting with Rails and I have bought the book “Agile Web
Development with Rails Second”. The book is very good but I’ve found
out already that there are some differences between rails 1.2 and the
current 2.1.

Is it the old edition good enough to learn rails? or should I try to
buy a book based on rails 2.1?

Thanks in advance,

GA

3

I would recommend ‘The Rails Way’ by Obie F. I found that much
more helpful than the Agile Web Dev book

On Sep 18, 5:07 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

4

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 5:39 PM, jjburka [email protected] wrote:

If you use the Second edition it is recommend to use the version of

Is it the old edition good enough to learn rails? or should I try to
buy a book based on rails 2.1?

Thanks in advance,

GA

Hi, I would recommend Agile Web D. with Rails 3rd Edition as a
starting
point. You should at least complete the construction of the demo
application. Then
I would take a look at the following books:

“The Rails Way” by Obie F. - an excellent reference on Rails 2.0
but
I’m looking forward to an update covering Rails 2.2
“Advanced Rails Recipes” by Mike C. and the Rails community - an
excellent cookbook (i.e. problem/solution format)

Lastly, you have the people here to assist you along the way.

Good luck,

-Conrad

5

All good recommendations, but I would like to toss in Simply Rails 2
as well as a good place to start. So far, I’ve been working through
the book using Rails 2.1.1 and have not had any problems so far.

6

On Sep 18, 9:38 pm, Bobnation [email protected] wrote:

All good recommendations, but I would like to toss in Simply Rails 2

I second Bob’s suggestion. I started in Rails with Agile Web
Development w/Rails v2, and was happy with it, but I wouldn’t
recommend taking the time to learn something that’s already out of
date. I got Simply Rails 2 because I wanted a walkthrough of how to do
things the Rails 2.0 way, and was very pleased. It doesn’t get
sidetracked by dozens of “here’s another way to do the same thing” it
just teaches you one way to do it, giving you the most complete
toolset in the shortest amount of time.

7

A good idea. The Beta PDF is available straight from PragProg … you
can give that a shot as well.

On Sep 20, 6:40 am, “Commander J.” [email protected]

8

James Burka wrote:

I would recommend ‘The Rails Way’ by Obie F. I found that much
more helpful than the Agile Web Dev book

On Sep 18, 5:07�pm, Robert W. [email protected]

I would certainly not recommend the Rails Way to a beginner.

The best IMHO is the Agile Web Dev with Rails, unfortunately it is
currently outdated, but with little research you should be able to make
all the code work. Don’t you have access to the 3rd Ed Beta?

9

You can learn rails with v2, but some things like migration file names
and
especially dynamic scaffolding will be different. If you don’t want to
remap
everything in your brain, get the 3rd edition eBook.