Balancing On Rails

February 08, 2008

Rails Way

Finally I got the book from Amazon.com. I think this book is in high demand because it took long time for Amazon.com to ship it. I also ordered the RailsSpace book along with this one. Both of them are with me now. I decided to read the Rails Way first than the RailsSpace book.

I am a slow reader in the sense that I don't have much time for it. Between jobs and family, the only time I get to read the book is in the night before going to bed. So I somehow manage to read couple of pages. You know how difficult it is to read a technical book at the end of the day.

But one thing I can tell you, this book is a must read if you want to develop Rails app. I would strongly suggest this book over the "Agile Web Development with Rails". The main reason is that Agile Web Development book starts off with an application and then in the later part it tries to explain how Rails work. I feel that the book does not explain everything in detail instead it expects you to do trial and error to figure out everything.

In contrast, Rails Way starts with the basic steps on learning Rails. It starts explaining from how the class loader works and the sequence of loading of the class. Then it slowly moves on to Controller etc. I find this very logical steps if you want to learn Rails in depth. I assume by the time you are done with the book, you would get a thorough understanding of the Rails framework and then it would be an easy task to develop application in rails.

So if you are starting out as a Rails newbie, like me,  drop the Agile book, instead buy this one. This is the only one you would need. It also covers Rails 2.0 which is a bonus!