Advanced Rails Recipes

I just did a gem list --remote, and it appears that the much-awaited Rails 2.0 is out. It has with tons of new features. But how do you use them? How do the emphases on resources and REST, and the inclusion of SimplyHelpful, affect the way you design your interfaces and applications? How do the new foxy fixtures make it easier to write tests? It isn't always obvious.

At the same time, the community has learned a lot of tricks: using presenters to handle multi-model forms; testing with mocks and with BDD; performance and deployment tricks; productivity tips. The list goes on.

Mike Clark polled the community and collected the best of the best tips into his new book, Advanced Rails Recipes. All this programmer goodness is probably why this book has one of the highest pre-order levels we've seen for any title.

With all that interest, there was a lot of pressure to deliver early. But I'm really pleased that Mike decided to wait for Rails 2 to come out before releasing the first beta. It's the most up-to-date Rails book out there. But, more than that, it's the best introduction to using Rails 2 effectively that I know. The current beta has 42 cool recipes, and there are another 30 or so to come.

Enjoy.

Comments

[Ian N]

How suitable is it going to be for a complete newbie like me? Should I start with an easier book first before moving on to this?

Ian:

I wouldn't say this should be your first Rails book: the recipes tend to be pretty advanced.

Dave Thomas

[Justin]

Excellent! I've been waiting for something like this. I've been trying to stay up-to-date on all the new features and methodologies but it would so nice to have them all in one place and on real paper.

[Ron Green]

Does this mean David will be doing a third edition of the Agile book?

[Resty Cena]

Dave,
It's not how 'advanced' the topic is that makes a topic difficult to understand, it's how much the writer assumes the reader already knows and need not spend time on explaining. Specifying what the reader must know beforehand and pointing to background materials are a help.

[Resty Cena]

Dave,
It's not how 'advanced' the topic is that makes a topic difficult to understand, it's how much the writer assumes the reader already knows and need not spend time on explaining. Specifying what the reader must know beforehand and pointing to background materials are a help.

[Resty Cena]

Dave,
It's not how 'advanced' the topic is that makes a topic difficult to understand, it's how much the writer assumes the reader already knows and need not spend time on explaining. Specifying what the reader must know beforehand and pointing to background materials are a help.

[Stephen]

Resty,

The book is called 'Advanced Recipes'. This should give away the fact that the target audience is one that is able to grasp more complex topics. If the writer spent the time to address all coders as a whole, then the book would be well over 1,000+ pages. Let's keep it DRY and not re-write what has already been written

[Rob O]

Will you and DHH be updating the Rails Book for 2.0.2 after work is finished on the new Pickaxe?