Re: Strange posting about ebooks

Ruby
1

From: anne001 [mailto:[email protected]]

#established earning good salaries who have therefore gotten religion.
#Or the others did not say anything.

me think that you are honest. that is only what matters to me.

#Here is my problem with the pickaxe, as posted recently on a pickaxe
#book discussion
#"I have no use for databases,

me love databases. it is the gist/source of all my programming work. it
is also where i earn a leaving.

#and the whole book uses one single database example, it

then you are lucky in that it uses only one.

#seems – I am allergic to the word “song”, it shows up too many time
#in that book, every
#other word it seems – "

Dave et all are good writers. And what they write reflects also on what
they also love to do. I presume they love music. And they are pragmatic.
Unfortunately, you do not love music i think. That is fine. some people
are different. But that does not make the book bad.

#and I had one person in agreement.
#If I can learn ruby in another book, it sounds like the pickaxe will be
#good as reference. So all is not lost.

#I have had no access to the ruby way, so I can’t say. It is not clear

You might like it since it has a different tone (compared w the
pickaxe). Maybe Hal can help you further.

#from this list if the files could be compromised. In any case I would
#want to wait for this summer when the ruby way second edition is
#expected.

#Bummer for the Sam’s teach yourself ruby not beeing updated.

Slagell’s teach yourself is a great book. It’s the book we use in the
family. I have kids that i want to excel in ruby and i use that book.

btw, It is not easy to write a (good) book. And there is no perfect book
either. You might try writing one sometime…

kind regards -botp

2

Peña, Botp [email protected] wrote:

btw, It is not easy to write a (good) book. And there is no perfect
book either. You might try writing one sometime…

If you can’t, though, almost as valuable is to be able to say clearly
why you did not like the book. That is definitely not something to be
discouraged.

martin

3

botp is right, all you need to do is listen to the news to see that
people love music, download millions of tunes a minute etc. I have
never downloaded a single song, never listen to any, other than the
operas with my mother, classic music radio… So the whole concept of
songs, of hoarding, of database is completely alien to me.

It makes complete sense that someone who loves music would write all
their examples with music.
The examples are verbose though, with a lot of text having to do with
music and not ruby. And sam’s teach yourself ruby manages to show small
examples that teach the points.

I have the same problem with Agile actually. 90% of people are making a
store. I am not. The whole first part of the book is really a tutorial
which is totally irrelevant to me. It is hard for me to experiment with
what we are doing when it is so heavily embeded in the semantic of the
example. I went to a ruby presentation, and right off the bat, we
created silly pages, created several data bases of anyname we want…
Because the examples did not seem to dictate the structure as much it
was easier for me to understand what Rails does. For example we made a
page with html, then a page with html with style, then a page with xtml
for a newsreader … and had to take out the style or it would not
work… Instead of rolling magnificiently towards “the solution” isn’t
cool! we kept going back and forth between what we got, and what Rails
was doing. The example was in the background so to speak, and we were
just enjoying changing things and seeing what happened.

So I hope I can find tutorials like that on the web, which help me
remember all the default behaviors, controllers/action… web
addresses, without having to rely on the agile example which is too
heavy for all its completness.

Thank you martin for encouraging the expression of discent with popular
books, even if a post complaining about receiving unasked for boot
copies is not the place for such discussion

4

On Feb 4, 2006, at 5:08 AM, Christian N. wrote:

While I don’t agree with your view on the Pickaxe, I think you are
right with respect to AWDWG, I didn’t like the store example
either—though it’s of course a good application to use Rails for.

Therefore, I actually only skimmed the tutorial part and went right on
the reference… if you know what you want/need, this approach works
good for me.

This is really interesting feedback.

When I chose the store, it wasn’t because I wanted to build a store,
or because I thought most people would want to build on. Instead, I
looked for an application that would let me explore most of the
functionality of Rails in some kind of logical order. It turned out a
store was rich enough to do that, but simple enough that the
application-specific functionality didn’t get in the way. The intent
was to teach Rails, not to teach how to build a store.

Cheers

Dave

5

Howdy,

I think the tutorial approach was an excellent idea because it allows
beginning and advanced programmers alike to learn a new (language |
framework). The beginner will use the tutorial as a story and learn
from Dave and David as they’re building the app (doesn’t matter what)
and benefit from seeing explanations with each choice. A more
advanced programmer will have questions answered along the way if
she’s paying attention.

I wondered how one could include partial templates and how web
services are done in ruby/rails. These and other techniques I have
in my existing toolset were answered as I read the story.

I’m sure there’s a better philosophical term for it, but I think you
can learn a lot from most examples.

Cheers,
Richard

6

I looked for an application that would let me explore most of the
functionality of Rails in some kind of logical order.

And I think it may well do that for me once I understand what is going
on, but it is going too fast for me too glitsy. It is probably just
what a pro wants who can tell at a glance what is going on.

For me, I want to talk to my database. That has something to do with
the model. The scaffold puts in too big pieces all at once…and I have
to decipher html, ruby which is fairly new… the scafold shows me
what can be done, but I need to go slower, find a tutorial explaining
how to talk to a database, read the reference part of the book, look at
the example, write my first ruby code in rails, baby steps a few lines
of codes at a time.

So the book is for folks who are more advanced than I am. But if it
wasn’t for the book, there wouldn’t be all the tutorials, interest, and
ordinary folks like me would not be trying! … So
I am glad the book is there for the front waves, and hopefully with
time, it will be there for me too.

7

Dave T. [email protected] writes:

This is really interesting feedback.

When I chose the store, it wasn’t because I wanted to build a store,
or because I thought most people would want to build on. Instead, I
looked for an application that would let me explore most of the
functionality of Rails in some kind of logical order. It turned out a
store was rich enough to do that, but simple enough that the
application-specific functionality didn’t get in the way. The intent
was to teach Rails, not to teach how to build a store.

Yeah, the store itself is not a bad idea, and for, say, 80% it will be
a good introduction to Rails… but the thing I am working on1 is
very unlike a store, both from a database point of view (hint: don’t
start with a self-referential model for your first AR usage) and
general behavior. So the store tutorial didn’t really help me a lot
(since I had seen the very “basics” you learn there in some other
tutorials already), but the reference part is really good—I quickly
found what I needed.

8

“anne001” [email protected] writes:

I have the same problem with Agile actually. 90% of people are making a
store. I am not. The whole first part of the book is really a tutorial
which is totally irrelevant to me.

While I don’t agree with your view on the Pickaxe, I think you are
right with respect to AWDWG, I didn’t like the store example
either—though it’s of course a good application to use Rails for.

Therefore, I actually only skimmed the tutorial part and went right on
the reference… if you know what you want/need, this approach works
good for me.