could any1 recomend a book i could buy for my girlfriend shes a computer programmer and deals in ruby rails i dont have a clue , there are a few on amazon could sum1 help me pick a decent 1?
See
http://web2withrubyonrails.gauldong.net/books/
There are (my) reviews of Rails and related books there.
I wish I could copy & paste it here but I don't really to want to HTMLize this mailing list post.
The first book I recommended is, of course, the Agile Web Development with Rails. Excerpt from my page:
Agile Web Development with Rails "The Rails Bible"
If you prefer learning/reading/practicing/doing from a book than online, the first book I'd recommend is obviously the one that David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Rails) wrote himself, Agile Web Development with Rails. Note that this book is excellent if you're already a bit familiar with the Ruby programming language, or if you can follow the Ruby examples quickly (I hope so, since in my opinion Ruby is one of the easiest programming languages to learn). If you need help in Ruby, though, you may want to read one of the Ruby programming language tutorials (in Rails-related Resources section above, or the Ruby books below), or get the Rails book for you that wants to learn Ruby and Rails from scratch, Ruby on Rails Up and Running (see more below).
The second edition of this book is available, you should get it rather than the first edition. The reason is pretty understandable: the Rails project is going in a very rapid pace, and there are cool new features in the newer Rails versions (1.2.x) that weren't available at the time the first edition of the book was written. Don't worry though, there are still plenty of documentation and samples on the Rails API documentation, the Rails wiki, and other places, to look for information about these new features.