# R4Rails book is losing me **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 8, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422 "2006-10-08T17:09:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/c5a1d2/32.png) [@fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fox)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422/1 "2006-10-08T17:09:16Z")
I’ve spent this past week reading the Ruby4Rails book, and for the most part, it’s great. After the initial introduction on rails, and the indepth ruby information, it takes me back to the rails stuff, which i was looking forward to all week 🙂 However, it soon becomes hard to follow and seems to miss steps out? All of a sudden, I’m told to have the composer.country in my view, but my composer model doesn’t know about a country(easy enough to fix i know). but then there are other similar things which help my lose my way again. Maybe I just need to take a day or two away from reading it, then go back to it fresh. Failing that, are there any other materials I might read before going back to this, to become more familiar with rails? thanks, fox. ---
**Author:** ![fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/c5a1d2/32.png) [@fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fox)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422/2 "2006-10-08T17:23:50Z")
Hi – On Sun, 8 Oct 2006, Fox Ph wrote: > I’ve spent this past week reading the Ruby4Rails book, and for the most > part, it’s great. After the initial introduction on rails, and the > indepth ruby information, it takes me back to the rails stuff, which i > was looking forward to all week 🙂 > However, it soon becomes hard to follow and seems to miss steps out? All > of a sudden, I’m told to have the composer.country in my view, but my > composer model doesn’t know about a country(easy enough to fix i know). > but then there are other similar things which help my lose my way again. The composer table has a ‘country’ column – so every composer automatically has a country attribute that can be retrieved with composer.country and set with composer.country = “France” (plus composer.save). That’s part of the coolness of ActiveRecord: every column in the table becomes an attribute of the corresponding Ruby object. > Maybe I just need to take a day or two away from reading it, then go > back to it fresh. Failing that, are there any other materials I might > read before going back to this, to become more familiar with rails? You could look at Agile Web D. with Rails, which is sort of the inverse of my book (in terms of Ruby/Rails ratio) and therefore complements it very well. But by all means keep reading R4R, and feel free to bring up any puzzlements you encounter. David – David A. Black | removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid Author of “Ruby for Rails” [1] | Ruby/Rails training & consultancy [3] DABlog (DAB’s Weblog) [2] | Co-director, Ruby Central, Inc. [4] [1] [Ruby for Rails](http://www.manning.com/black) | [3] [http://www.rubypowerandlight.com](http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) [2] [http://dablog.rubypal.com](http://dablog.rubypal.com) | [4] [http://www.rubycentral.org](http://www.rubycentral.org) ---
**Author:** ![fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/c5a1d2/32.png) [@fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fox)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422/3 "2006-10-08T18:47:58Z")
In case you weren’t already aware, you can also download a zip of the source code from the publisher’s website ([http://www.manning-source.com/books/black/black\_R4RCode.zip](http://www.manning-source.com/books/black/black_R4RCode.zip)). Maybe it’s cheating to start with the finished product but I always end up making mistakes (typos, skipped lines) when I re-type from the book. This tip doesn’t directly speak to your post, but I’m also working through r4r and I find that it helps me focus better when I’m not having to troubleshoot mistakes I’ve introduced into the code examples. Overall, I’ve really enjoyed r4r. I started out with Agile v2 (beta) but found the organization of the content in r4r much easier to follow and really felt like I was grasping the concepts introduced. Then again, I’m a total beginner at programming and rails. Agile is definitely worth taking a look at, especially the v2 pdf beta as it covers the latest stuff going into Rails 1.2. I hope there is a new edition of r4r in the works to bring it up to date, but the current edition is still a helpful introduction. Good luck, John-Scott ---
**Author:** ![fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/c5a1d2/32.png) [@fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fox)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422/4 "2006-10-08T19:31:26Z")
I started with AWDWR v1. It was (and is also in v2) good, but I did not appreciate how much magic was Rails versus how much was Ruby. In combination with R4R, I was able to sort it out and have a clearer appreciation of Ruby one one hand and Rails on the other. Each is indispensable to me. Pickaxe is great for digging deep into the Ruby magic. If you want to dig deep into Rails, the API manual is the way to go. Bill ---
**Author:** ![fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/c5a1d2/32.png) [@fox](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/fox)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2006, 10:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/r4rails-book-is-losing-me/71422/5 "2006-10-08T22:36:25Z")
I did not worry too much when I read the book first time. I read it very fast. The second reading was very slow with irb session always running the examples. Everything has become more clear and I am able to retain the material by grasping the basic concepts. I had few weeks break between the first reading and the second.