Agile Web Development with Rails Second vs Third edition

rubyonrails-talk
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 Acilu wrote:

3

I would recommend 'The Rails Way' by Obie Fernandez I found that much more helpful than the Agile Web Dev book

4

Hi, I would recommend Agile Web Development 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 Fernandez - an excellent reference on Rails 2.0 but I’m looking forward to an update covering Rails 2.2

“Advanced Rails Recipes” by Mike Clark 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

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w/Rails v2, and was happy with it, but I wouldn't recommend taking the time to learn something that's already out of date.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

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.

8

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

9

James Burka wrote:

I would recommend 'The Rails Way' by Obie Fernandez I found that much more helpful than the Agile Web Dev book

On Sep 18, 5:07�pm, Robert Walker <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>

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?