Beginning Ruby on Rails Review

If you’ve been looking to start up your own web app like many people, you may have heard about Ruby on Rails before. Ruby on Rails is a ruby framework made especially for implementation of websites on the web. In the last year or so Ruby on Rails has been on fire and only a few books have emerged that are really great. This book isn’t the best book on the topic that you will find but it’s really a decent book.

Beginning Ruby on Rails
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As with all of the other Wrox books I’ve read in the past, this book jumps right into the teaching. Now the only real prerequisite to reading this book is that you should probably know html before you get started. Otherwise you will be pretty confused in the later chapters.

The first chapters starts with a bang, and explains how to install Ruby on Rails on your local computer. This is followed by a long set of tutorials that teach you how to write ruby. Granted it is all very basic stuff the book makes sure that the reader understands everything before moving on. So by the time you actually get to the part of the book where the building of the web app is started you should understand and know how to use ruby.

The actual Rails part of the book starts on chapter 4 and it runs you through very basics of starting a Rails project. Once you’re through with that you will move on to the next chapter which teaches you how to make the most basic of a web app, something that you wouldn’t put out to the public but something that you should be able to learn from quite quickly.

After that you will learn how databases react with Rails. The book explains how the databases are connected, and goes over basic database design. It really explains things quite well.

The last few chapters are about improving the back-end of a Rails app, implementing ajax in all of your pages, and goes through and explains unit testing. The part about unit testing was a little bit confusing for me and hard to follow, but I eventually got what it was all about.

So this book is good for anyone who already knows html and really wants to get their own web application up and running. It is a little hard to follow at times, but if you keep reading on you will find that things make sense after a while. The book isn’t priced to high it rings in at a $35 price-tag, but that is cheap compared to some of the other Ruby on Rails books that are out there.

Product Rating:

Company:
Wrox

Requirements:
n/a

Pricing:
$34.99

Reviewed by:
Jake Dahn

Competition:
n/a

Pros:
Lots of good stuff in the book, relatively easy to learn from

Cons:
Hard to follow at times, requires previous html knowledge

Bottom Line:
This book is good for anyone who already knows html and really wants to get their own web application up and running.

One Response

  • As far as you can see, there are a lot more advantages than disadvantages on why to choose Ruby. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to surpass Ruby’s major virtue. This language has turned programming from a complicated time-consuming process into a simple and quick task. Ruby on Rails – a programming language truly worth mastering. ruby on rails Canada