Hi there,
i’m a new RoR developer and i need your feedback about this book :http://pragprog.com/book/rails4/agile-web-development-with-rails-4
Is it good for learning Rails ? I mean, i already read Michael Hartl tutorial. Is it useful to me to buy this book ? Are there other good books about Rails 4 ?
thx guys !
p.s: sorry for my english, i’m french x)
Anything from that publisher is bound to be good
–rob
Salût et bienvenu!
I would say it's a good book — my experience is with the first edition (Rails 1!! OMG) but DHH does present some good ideas. It's contender isn't finished yet, but is available as a review edition: Rails 4 In Action from Manning Pub (Ryan Bigg, Yehuda Katz, Steve Klabnick — all real masters with opinions that differ a bit from DHH's). The previous, Rails 3 In Action, is really excellent, and the new edition is quite good (still needs some edits, though).
However, If you've gone through Hartl's tutorial and still wanting more, both of the above cover a lot of the same ground, but from different points of view. That's not a bad thing, but might not be what you want.
My next course of action would be to start developing some simple Rails applications, then study the Rails's guides at http://guides.rubyonrails.org (and look at http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org as well — they represent the latest edits) and to start looking at the API docs, rather than delve into another book, but that's the way I approach things.
Another thing is that learning Rails, one should have a good grasp of how Ruby works. If that's not the case (I can't tell, just a possibility), I'd suggest Ruby for Rails — which focuses on the Ruby aspects that are necessary to understand how Rails works. It's a bit dated, but still good. And of course, the updated Pickaxe book: Ruby Programming, 19 and 2.0 edition from pragprog.
Bonne chance!