dblack@wobblini.net
2006-Feb-10 14:22 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
Hi -- My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book due to appear on May 1. If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) David -- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black
Kelly Felkins
2006-Feb-10 15:29 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
Has anyone picked this up? What do you think so far? -Kelly On 2/10/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:> > Hi -- > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1. > > If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > David > > -- > David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) > Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) > > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060210/1a817b53/attachment.html
Wilson Bilkovich
2006-Feb-10 15:53 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
I read the first chapter last night. David knows his stuff, and I think this book is going to be a good resource. I don''t think it''s necessarily going to be a vital reference for expert Rails hackers, but if the rest of the book goes as planned, I''m going to pick up a pile of them to give to Rails trainees. --Wilson. On 2/10/06, Kelly Felkins <railsinator@gmail.com> wrote:> Has anyone picked this up? What do you think so far? > > -Kelly > > > On 2/10/06, dblack@wobblini.net < dblack@wobblini.net> wrote: > > Hi -- > > > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > > due to appear on May 1. > > > > If you''re interested, see > http://www.manning.com/books/black > > > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > > > > David > > > > -- > > David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) > > Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) > > > > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > > from Manning Early Access Program! > http://www.manning.com/books/black > > _______________________________________________ > > Rails mailing list > > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > > >
Alain Ravet
2006-Feb-11 06:38 UTC
[Rails] Re: [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
David, The table of contents and chapter 1 should be accessible for free. Alain
Bob Hutchison
2006-Feb-11 16:17 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
On Feb 10, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Kelly Felkins wrote:> Has anyone picked this up? What do you think so far?I had the opportunity to participate in the review process of the book, and it turns out that I''m allowed to talk about it :-) The book, in my opinion, is notable on four counts: 1) There are a lot of programmers wanting to work in Rails but they do not know Ruby. There is plenty of evidence that they can get quite far without paying any attention to Ruby as a programming language. At some point, they''ll want to know more. This book will keep those people going. There is something to be said for learning a language in this way -- if nothing else it keeps things grounded. 2) There is a lot of talk about domain specific languages these days. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed illustration of the concepts involved. The example is Rails-as-DSL the implementation language is Ruby, of course, but the ideas work in any programming language with the capability to implement a DSL. 3) If there are any programmers still unfamiliar with what you gain by using a dynamic language there is plenty in here to illustrate the point. No debate, no controversy, just evidence. 4) Chapter 13 is wonderful. If you are familiar with David Black''s contributions to Ruby over the years you''ll have a very good idea of the tone and competence expressed. Easy to read, to the point yet aware of wider issues than simply Ruby for Rails. I''ve already recommended it to a bunch of people. Cheers, Bob> > -Kelly > > On 2/10/06, dblack@wobblini.net < dblack@wobblini.net> wrote: > Hi -- > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1. > > If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > David > > -- > David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) > Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) > > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails---- Bob Hutchison -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/ hutch/> Recursive Design Inc. -- <http://www.recursive.ca/> Raconteur -- <http://www.raconteur.info/> xampl for Ruby -- <http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060211/d5de45d8/attachment-0001.html
Abdur-Rahman Advany
2006-Feb-11 16:52 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
Hi david, Looking at the TOC and your background, I think this will be the rails/ruby book for all rails developers!!! How many chapters are release each week? is it one a week till May? dblack@wobblini.net wrote:> Hi -- > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1. > > If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > David >
dblack@wobblini.net
2006-Feb-11 17:12 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
Hi -- On Sat, 11 Feb 2006, Abdur-Rahman Advany wrote:> Hi david, > > Looking at the TOC and your background, I think this will be the rails/ruby > book for all rails developers!!!Thanks -- I hope you''re right :-)> How many chapters are release each week? is it one a week till May?I think it has to be more than one per week, to have them all ready by May :-) It will probably vary, but on average I''m hoping for more like two per week. The chapters are all basically written; what''s happening now is that they''re being copy edited, tech edited, proofread, and, along the way, rescrutinized and troubleshot by me. So at least a large number of them should go through the process pretty efficiently. David> dblack@wobblini.net wrote: >> Hi -- >> >> My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time >> through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book >> due to appear on May 1. >> >> If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black >> >> (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) >> >> >> David >> > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black
dblack@wobblini.net wrote:> My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1.Congrats David! -- John Long http://wiseheartdesign.com
It looks like it is mostly ruby. Are the examples going to be from rails? or just the second and last chapter?
Hi -- On Sat, 11 Feb 2006, anne g wrote:> It looks like it is mostly ruby. Are the examples going to be from rails? > or just the second and last chapter?It''s all Ruby, but some of it is also Rails :-) A lot of examples throughout the book do come from Rails apps and also the Rails source. (The last chapter is specifically about exploring the source, but other source examples occur at other points.) Not all of them do -- but let''s just say that if you approached this as a general-purpose Ruby book, you''d find yourself repeatedly wondering, "Why is this guy so obsessed with tying all this stuff in with Rails?!" :-) David -- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black
I just bought the book (both electronic and hard-copy form -- I''m a sucker for RoR books these days) and read the available chapter. As background, I''ve only been working with Ruby and RoR for a couple of months now, though I''ve been teaching and working with J2EE for many years. I read the bulk of the pickaxe book and recently completed the Agile Development book. Therefore, I have lots of book knowledge at the moment, but not a lot of experience yet. That means I can get myself into trouble easily but struggle to get out of it. :) Chapter 1 (the only available chapter) is clearly written for novice programmers. It almost has a "Ruby for Dummies" feel to it, especially compared to the pickaxe. Still, it''s clear and a quick and easy read. I did have one problem, though. I''m running Ruby 1.8.2 on a Win XP machine, after using the one-click installer. The book suggests on page 25 that I start up irb using the rbconfig module ($ irb -rrbconfig) in order to examine configuration information about my installation. When I tried that, I got: "in ''parse_opts'': Unrecognized switch: -rrbconfig (IRB::UnrecognizedSwitch)" and a stack trace. Instead, I started irb and entered "> require ''rbconfig''" and it seems to be working. That''s a bit odd, though, because I thought I tried it this morning without success, but at least it''s working now. I''m looking forward to reading future chapters. Ken -- Kenneth A. Kousen, Ph.D. President Kousen IT, Inc. http://www.kousenit.com ken.kousen@kousenit.com -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of dblack@wobblini.net Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 9:22 AM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: [Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release Hi -- My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book due to appear on May 1. If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) David -- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
dblack@wobblini.net
2006-Feb-16 14:46 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
Hi -- On Sun, 12 Feb 2006, Ken Kousen wrote:> I did have one problem, though. I''m running Ruby 1.8.2 on a Win XP machine, > after using the one-click installer. The book suggests on page 25 that I > start up irb using the rbconfig module ($ irb -rrbconfig) in order to > examine configuration information about my installation. When I tried that, > I got: > > "in ''parse_opts'': Unrecognized switch: -rrbconfig (IRB::UnrecognizedSwitch)" > > and a stack trace. > > Instead, I started irb and entered "> require ''rbconfig''" and it seems to be > working. That''s a bit odd, though, because I thought I tried it this > morning without success, but at least it''s working now.In Rubys up to (I think) 1.8.2, irb didn''t accept the run-in extension name with the -r switch, but now it does. I should update the examples of the -v and --version switches to reflect post-1.8.2-ness, since right now it appears I''m using 1.8.2 but the irb behavior doesn''t match.> I''m looking forward to reading future chapters.Thanks! Chapter 2 is up, as you''ve probably seen, and Chapter 3 is near the end of the conveyor belt.... David> > Ken > > -- > Kenneth A. Kousen, Ph.D. > President > Kousen IT, Inc. > http://www.kousenit.com > ken.kousen@kousenit.com > -----Original Message----- > From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org > [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of > dblack@wobblini.net > Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 9:22 AM > To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > Subject: [Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release > > Hi -- > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1. > > If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > David > > -- > David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) > Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) > > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black
On 2/16/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:> Thanks! Chapter 2 is up, as you''ve probably seen, and Chapter 3 is > near the end of the conveyor belt....Earlier this week, I bought the ebook+paper version for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to demo Manning''s ebook process. I''ve been using O''Reilly Safari for years and I love it, but their rough cut books are horrible. Two, I wanted a new Ruby book. In the first two chapters I haven''t hit anything new and amazing yet, but it''s well written and I''m happy with it so far. I''m looking forward to the more in-depth information in later chapters. The quality is that of a finished Manning product (i.e. top quality). It looks like a PDF of what you''ll be seeing when it''s printed. I just copied the files up to my strongspace account, and now I can read it wherever I go. -- James
I''ve now made it through Chapter 2 and thought I''d comment on it here. If Chapter 1 was "Ruby for Dummies," then chapter 2 starts out as "Rails for Dummies," but doesn''t stay that way. The beginning is a discussion of the classic MVC architecture and how the Rails framework libraries map to the various parts. Since my development box is a Win XP machine, my directory structure is a bit different from the one shown, but similar enough that the mappings were clear. Where life starts to get really interesting is the development of the sample app (R4RMusic, short for Ruby for Rails Music Store) that is used in the rest of the book. As many Rails developers apparently do, the author started with the database and worked from there. The database consists of three tables and the associations that come with them. One difference between this book and the others I''ve read is that the SQL provided to create the database in this case does not try to enforce foreign key relationships. That''s of course done in the Ruby code, using belongs_to and has_many relationships (interestingly, the sample does not use an HABTM relationship at this point), but the SQL creating the tables only lists items like "composer_id" which will handle the relationship, but doesn''t include any foreign key constraints in it. The AWDWR book (Thomas and DHH) has an extended discussion of this issue and makes it very clear that the true nature of relationships can''t be inferred from the database, but even in their book they add in foreign key constraints in their SQL. Rather than try to download the code (a download is mentioned more than once, but I don''t know if it''s yet available -- besides, I wanted the practice) I typed everything in by hand. I used RadRails 0.5.3 inside Eclipse 3.1.1, incidentally, but that''s the only deviation I made from the demonstration itself. Another major deviation from other Rails books is that the author does not immediately use the scaffold generator. Instead, the "generate model" and "generate controller" scripts were used repeatedly. Since generating the controller winds up generating the view as well, the basic files were then present for editing. The only difference I noticed is that the basic CRUD functionality wasn''t there any more. Minor typo: In Listing 2.2, the second INSERT INTO line has two "VALUES" key words in it, one at the end of the first line and one at the beginning of the second line. The chapter then shifts to the controllers and illustrates how easily one can use a finder class method to access all the records in each table. I found it notable that in the "Composer.find(:all)" method, the author chose to do sorting by appending a Ruby block instead of using the ":order" symbol in the find. Presumably something like "Composer.find(:all, :order ==> "last_name, first_name")" would have worked just as well as the block, but I haven''t tried it yet. The controllers each include a "show" action which sets the relevant entity (@work, @edition, or @composer) using the ":id" param. Then we switch to the view. The description of the view included a base layout, which was saved as an rhtml file, then the line "layout ''base''" was added to the application.rb controller. The author mentioned that the layout could have been saved as "application.rhtml" directly and avoided this, but I agree it was useful to see the separation. Listing 2.3 has a typo, by the way. Presumably the lines "</body></html>" were meant to be included at the bottom of the listing, especially since the DOCTYPE was for XHTML 1.0 Strict. :) The views themselves were all clear and easy to understand. They simply used some erb to loop through the entities and display them, with appropriate links. Another unusual part of the demo is that rather than generate an index method and thereby use the index view, the author created a separate welcome page and then had to edit routes.rb to make the application go there by default. That''s not a problem, of course, and it was actually interesting to see how that was done. I just found it unusual relative to the other books. The last few pages of the chapter are the fun part. That''s where the author walks the reader through the actual call sequence, even separating out the web server calls (he uses Apache as an example) from the internal Rails calls. I found that quite good, though I was expecting him to use the same R4RMusic application as an example rather than talking about a completely unrelated one. In conclusion, I really liked this chapter. It''s true that parts of it felt overly basic or simplistic, but the demo worked and the walkthrough at the end was interesting. I''m looking forward to digging into Chapter 3, now that I know it''s available. Ken -- Kenneth A. Kousen, Ph.D. President Kousen IT, Inc. http://www.kousenit.com ken.kousen@kousenit.com -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of dblack@wobblini.net Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:46 AM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: RE: [Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release Hi -- On Sun, 12 Feb 2006, Ken Kousen wrote:> I did have one problem, though. I''m running Ruby 1.8.2 on a Win XPmachine,> after using the one-click installer. The book suggests on page 25 that I > start up irb using the rbconfig module ($ irb -rrbconfig) in order to > examine configuration information about my installation. When I triedthat,> I got: > > "in ''parse_opts'': Unrecognized switch: -rrbconfig(IRB::UnrecognizedSwitch)"> > and a stack trace. > > Instead, I started irb and entered "> require ''rbconfig''" and it seems tobe> working. That''s a bit odd, though, because I thought I tried it this > morning without success, but at least it''s working now.In Rubys up to (I think) 1.8.2, irb didn''t accept the run-in extension name with the -r switch, but now it does. I should update the examples of the -v and --version switches to reflect post-1.8.2-ness, since right now it appears I''m using 1.8.2 but the irb behavior doesn''t match.> I''m looking forward to reading future chapters.Thanks! Chapter 2 is up, as you''ve probably seen, and Chapter 3 is near the end of the conveyor belt.... David> > Ken > > -- > Kenneth A. Kousen, Ph.D. > President > Kousen IT, Inc. > http://www.kousenit.com > ken.kousen@kousenit.com > -----Original Message----- > From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org > [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of > dblack@wobblini.net > Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 9:22 AM > To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > Subject: [Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release > > Hi -- > > My book "Ruby for Rails" is now being released one chapter at a time > through the Manning Early Access Program, with the whole book > due to appear on May 1. > > If you''re interested, see http://www.manning.com/books/black > > (I guess I could have just sent my sig with no body, but anyway :-) > > > David > > -- > David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) > Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) > > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/black _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
Raymond Brigleb
2006-Mar-06 17:59 UTC
[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" in early access release
> > "Ruby for Rails" chapters now available > > from Manning Early Access Program! http://www.manning.com/books/blackI also wrote up a short review of the several different beta book offerings, including Mr. Black''s excellent Ruby for Rails. So far I am loving it, releasing two chapters or so a week makes me feel like I''m back in college! And I never went to college! http://needmoredesigns.com/notes/282/beta-books-everywhere
On 2/16/06, James Ludlow <jamesludlow@gmail.com> wrote:> On 2/16/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote: > > Thanks! Chapter 2 is up, as you''ve probably seen, and Chapter 3 is > > near the end of the conveyor belt.... > > Earlier this week, I bought the ebook+paper version for a couple of reasons. > > One, I wanted to demo Manning''s ebook process. I''ve been using > O''Reilly Safari for years and I love it, but their rough cut books are > horrible.I''m responding to myself in case this turns up in a search for someone. It appears that O''Reilly has cleaned up their Rough Cuts. I gave it a second chance with Rails Cookbook, and it looks a lot more like a real book than my first impression of whatever it was I viewed as a Rough Cuts demo. I can''t speak to the content yet, as I''ve only just started to dig into the book, but so far so good. -- James