PragDave

A busy weekend

And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day—I said fifty people a day—walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? Friends, they may think it’s a movement. And that’s what it is. (Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant)

We just shipped the 1000’th copy of the Rails Beta Book! I’m blown away, particularly considering that this weekend was a holiday here in the US.

Friends, they may think it’s a movement. And that’s what it is.

Thank you all.

Oops - Forgot the Sample Chapters

Since we announced the availability of the Rails Beta Book, the fans on the servers haven’t stopped whining. It’s been an amazing couple of days—the response so far has greatly exceeded our expectations. Thank you.

And then someone pointed out that we’d forgotten to put up the sample chapters. Oops.

They’re up now. Sorry about that.

The Rails BetaBook is Ready

We’ve had an incredible response to the idea of releasing the Rails book early in beta form, so we’ve decided to go for it. Here’s the scoop.

You can now buy the book as either a PDF or as a PDF/Paper book combo. We’ll ship your PDF (in beta form) when we get your order. When the final book is available (currently aiming for the first week in August) we’ll automatically ship you the final copy of the PDF. If you ordered the Book+PDF combo pack, we’ll also ship you the paper book at that time. The price you pay now is the same as the price will be when the book is available, so by buying now you basically get early access to the book and then get the final version, all for the same price as you’d otherwise pay for just the final version.

The book is currently pretty much complete. It’s missing an index, and a couple of small sections on things that are still pending in Rails. Visually, it’s a mess. There are bad page breaks, over-long lines, and all sorts of other ugly things. We’ll get all that sorted out over the coming weeks.

Here are the links:

• Purchase the book+PDF combo pack ($43.75 plus shipping)
• Purchase the PDF ($22.50)
• The Beta Book FAQ (free :)

Enjoy!

The Pragmatic Studio in Denver

I was in Denver this weekend for a No Fluff show. It was great to see old faces and meet new folks. I was reminded (again) of what a lot of great technologists live in Denver.

I’m really looking forward to coming back in June for our first Pragmatic Studio, the workshop that Andy, Mike Clark, and I are running. With my head down for so long in the Rails book, I hadn’t noticed how close we’re getting to that—there are less than 10 days left for early registration. I must get out more…

Rails Book—an Early Release?

I’ve been getting a bunch of e-mail asking when the Rails book will be ready. So far I’ve been taking a conservative, publisher’s approach and saying "early August."

But folks are saying they want it now. And David HH is doing a good job of convincing me that perhaps the old ways are not always the best. So, once I’ve worked through a couple of legal things, perhaps we’ll find a way to get some form of the book out there. Maybe as early as next week. It’ll be different, and it’ll be interesting.

Watch this space.