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Book:   Simply Rails 2
Subject:   Great Beginner Book
Date:   2008-05-14 14:55:27
From:   Abrahm Coffman
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

After deciding to teach myself Ruby on Rails I first bought "Agile Web Development with Rails" from the Pragmatic Programmers. However by the time I got the book Rails 2.0 had already been released and the examples in the book were outdated. I scoured the net and Simply Rails 2 seemed to be the only book available for the new Rails release. So far I am extremely satisfied. It's a great book for people new to the platform, and does a good job of hitting all the basics. I've almost completed the entire sample application (a social bookmarking app) and so far I've only encountered one minor issue (good job reviewers/editors!). The writing style is very clear and straightforward, and the format of the examples is great.


If I were to have one gripe about the book it's that it spends a little too much time writing tests. I know this is important for application development and a good habit to get into, but when you're running tests to check your markup I think it's going a little overboard. I would have rather seen more advanced material, and perhaps a tutorial on subversion and capistrano.

Simply Rails 2
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