Rails - Oct 2010 - What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails experience?

What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails or ruby
experience? I''m just curious about it and want to get started.

Do I start with 3.0 or 2.0?

If one is a very good OO developer and knows Java and Scala really
well, would it be hard to get by with rails without knowing much ruby?
(basically learning book at the same time).

Any good books that do a fantastic and thorough job at not really
explaining how an MVC works but how everything works in rails
specifically? Something that doesn''t just look at "the most basic
case", but really gets in there above a basic CRUD app.

I was flipping through a book about rails 2.0 at Chapters and the
first 20 pages kept giving a sales pitch about how easy rails is, and
yadda yadda. It tended to rip on java a lot... but since I know Java
really well, I thought the author didn''t know what he was talking
about. His comparisons and examples of Java were biased... either
comparing it to the language itself or to frameworks that I wouldn''t
even consider using because they suck (struts, etc.). I think his goal
was to make it look worse than it really was. Spring 3.0, while not
ideal, isn''t nearly as bad as the author was letting on... and I guess
I lost confidence in the author because he didn''t even bother to
mention Spring.

Anyway, any advice to some lean yet informative and intelligent books
would be helpful. I thought the Scala book written by Martin and crew
was fantastic, so if a book exists at that caliber, I''m very open to
reading it.

Thanks

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egervari wrote:
> What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails or ruby
> experience? I''m just curious about it and want to get started.
> 
> Do I start with 3.0 or 2.0?
If I were starting today, I''d probably learn Rails 3.
> 
> If one is a very good OO developer and knows Java and Scala really
> well, would it be hard to get by with rails without knowing much ruby?
> (basically learning book at the same time).
Make sure to learn enough Ruby that you can understand what''s going on.
> 
> Any good books that do a fantastic and thorough job at not really
> explaining how an MVC works but how everything works in rails
> specifically? Something that doesn''t just look at "the most
basic
> case", but really gets in there above a basic CRUD app.
You don''t need that yet, I think.  Learn the basics of the framework 
first.
> 
> I was flipping through a book about rails 2.0 at Chapters and the
> first 20 pages kept giving a sales pitch about how easy rails is, and
> yadda yadda. It tended to rip on java a lot... but since I know Java
> really well, I thought the author didn''t know what he was talking
> about. His comparisons and examples of Java were biased... either
> comparing it to the language itself or to frameworks that I
wouldn''t
> even consider using because they suck (struts, etc.). I think his goal
> was to make it look worse than it really was. 
I do know Java fairly well.  I also know Ruby.  Java is so inflexible by 
comparison that I''d be quite happy never to use it again (except in the
context of something like JRuby).

The big advantage of the Rails framework (that no one talks about) 
really is the Ruby language.  This is why no PHP or Java framework can 
compare to it IMHO.
> Spring 3.0, while not
> ideal, isn''t nearly as bad as the author was letting on... and I
guess
> I lost confidence in the author because he didn''t even bother to
> mention Spring.
Which?  He said it was bad or he didn''t mention it?  You can''t
have it
both ways.
> 
> Anyway, any advice to some lean yet informative and intelligent books
> would be helpful. I thought the Scala book written by Martin and crew
> was fantastic, so if a book exists at that caliber, I''m very open
to
> reading it.
Agile Web Development with Rails?  (Never read it, since I don''t do 
paper books for programming most of the time, but it is the
"canonical"
book.)
> 
> Thanks
Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
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I would recommend the book Agile Web Development with Rails. I know there is
a new version for Rails 3. I think if you do the practical tutorial part,
which if I remember is only maybe 100-200pages, you should just jump in. I
came from asp.net and this worked for me. Then soon you will want to learn
more ruby but seriously, I think you can become dangerous pretty quick with
this book if you learn well doing self directed stuff.

David

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 4:35 PM, egervari
<ken.egervari-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails or ruby
> experience? I''m just curious about it and want to get started.
>
> Do I start with 3.0 or 2.0?
>
> If one is a very good OO developer and knows Java and Scala really
> well, would it be hard to get by with rails without knowing much ruby?
> (basically learning book at the same time).
>
> Any good books that do a fantastic and thorough job at not really
> explaining how an MVC works but how everything works in rails
> specifically? Something that doesn''t just look at "the most
basic
> case", but really gets in there above a basic CRUD app.
>
> I was flipping through a book about rails 2.0 at Chapters and the
> first 20 pages kept giving a sales pitch about how easy rails is, and
> yadda yadda. It tended to rip on java a lot... but since I know Java
> really well, I thought the author didn''t know what he was talking
> about. His comparisons and examples of Java were biased... either
> comparing it to the language itself or to frameworks that I
wouldn''t
> even consider using because they suck (struts, etc.). I think his goal
> was to make it look worse than it really was. Spring 3.0, while not
> ideal, isn''t nearly as bad as the author was letting on... and I
guess
> I lost confidence in the author because he didn''t even bother to
> mention Spring.
>
> Anyway, any advice to some lean yet informative and intelligent books
> would be helpful. I thought the Scala book written by Martin and crew
> was fantastic, so if a book exists at that caliber, I''m very open
to
> reading it.
>
> Thanks
>
> --
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David Kahn wrote:
> I would recommend the book Agile Web Development with Rails. I know 
> there is
> a new version for Rails 3. I think if you do the practical tutorial 
> part,
> which if I remember is only maybe 100-200pages, you should just jump in. 
> I
> came from asp.net and this worked for me. Then soon you will want to 
> learn
> more ruby but seriously, I think you can become dangerous pretty quick 
> with
> this book if you learn well doing self directed stuff.
Just do all development test-first (I recommend RSpec and Cucumber; 
avoid Rails'' fixtures entirely and go straight to factories).  And of 
course, use version control.
> 
> David
Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
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Yes, I do test-first for the last 8 or so years. I am a little
familiar with RSpec''s design because ScalaTest has parts that are
blatant ripoff of RSpec ;) I love ScalaTest, so I will probably like
RSpec.

What do you mean by factories? I know of the factory pattern, but what
do you mean specifically?

Also, is it easy to disable the testing framework that is shipped with
rails and get it to use RSpec?

On Oct 6, 6:31 pm, Marnen Laibow-Koser
<li...-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> David Kahn wrote:
> > I would recommend the book Agile Web Development with Rails. I know
> > there is
> > a new version for Rails 3. I think if you do the practical tutorial
> > part,
> > which if I remember is only maybe 100-200pages, you should just jump
in.
> > I
> > came from asp.net and this worked for me. Then soon you will want to
> > learn
> > more ruby but seriously, I think you can become dangerous pretty quick
> > with
> > this book if you learn well doing self directed stuff.
>
> Just do all development test-first (I recommend RSpec and Cucumber;
> avoid Rails'' fixtures entirely and go straight to factories).  And
of
> course, use version control.
>
>
>
> > David
>
> Best,
> --
> Marnen Laibow-Koserhttp://www.marnen.org
> mar...-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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> What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails or ruby
> experience? I''m just curious about it and want to get started.
Learn Ruby first.  Or at least enough Ruby that you don''t think of
Rails as being magical.

http://humblelittlerubybook.com/ - Free (donations welcome).  I''ve
never read it...

http://www.manning.com/black2/ - Excellent.

http://www.manning.com/katz/ - Rails 3.  Not out yet, but seems good so far.

Disclaimer - I like manning''s books and have reviewed several. 
I''m sure there are other good ones as well...  I don''t get
anything for it, but there you go :)
> Do I start with 3.0 or 2.0?
3.0.

> If one is a very good OO developer and knows Java and Scala really
> well, would it be hard to get by with rails without knowing much ruby?
> (basically learning book at the same time).
Personally I think you''ll hit the wall at "above a basic CRUD
app".  You''ll have an advantage over someone who doesn''t
know any language well, but spending a couple of days cruising through some ruby
books will certainly be time well spent.

-philip

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egervari wrote:
> Yes, I do test-first for the last 8 or so years. I am a little
> familiar with RSpec''s design because ScalaTest has parts that are
> blatant ripoff of RSpec ;) I love ScalaTest, so I will probably like
> RSpec.
> 
> What do you mean by factories? I know of the factory pattern, but what
> do you mean specifically?
Nothing particularly closely related to the Factory pattern (which
isn''t
necessary in Ruby that often).  Check out the Factory Girl and Machinist 
gem docs for an explanation of the idea.
> 
> Also, is it easy to disable the testing framework that is shipped with
> rails and get it to use RSpec?
There''s nothing to disable.  If you don''t want to write
Test::Unit
tests, just don''t write any.  Test::Unit and RSpec can even coexist on 
the same project (as is the case at my job, since we''re switching 
gradually).

Best,
-- 
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org

Sent from my iPhone
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Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
> There''s nothing to disable.  If you don''t want to write
Test::Unit
> tests, just don''t write any.  Test::Unit and RSpec can even
coexist on
> the same project (as is the case at my job, since we''re switching 
> gradually).
Out of curiosity... Switching gradually in which direction? From RSpec 
to Test::Unit (+various extensions e.g. Shoulda). Or are you switching 
to RSpec?

I''ve been a fan of RSpec for some time. It''s what I actually
started
with, but I hear a lot of buzz about various extensions to Test::Unit 
these days as well. I''m just interested in hearing your thoughts.
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Robert Walker wrote:
> Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>> There''s nothing to disable.  If you don''t want to
write Test::Unit
>> tests, just don''t write any.  Test::Unit and RSpec can even
coexist on
>> the same project (as is the case at my job, since we''re
switching
>> gradually).
> 
> Out of curiosity... Switching gradually in which direction? From RSpec 
> to Test::Unit (+various extensions e.g. Shoulda). Or are you switching 
> to RSpec?
To RSpec.  (I''ve been sort of pushing it, but the switch was underway 
before I got here.)
> 
> I''ve been a fan of RSpec for some time. It''s what I
actually started
> with, but I hear a lot of buzz about various extensions to Test::Unit 
> these days as well. I''m just interested in hearing your thoughts.
I much prefer RSpec.  Test::Unit encourages unreadable 
implementation-dependent tests, at least in my experience.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
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egervari wrote:
> What is the best way to learn rails 3.0 with no prior rails or ruby
> experience? I''m just curious about it and want to get started.
> 
Get ruby 1.9.2/rails 3/gems installed - tons of tutorials out there for 
a basic setup.

Buy the Pickaxe book (is it still a pickaxe for Ruby 1.9.x)

mkdir rails
cd rails
rails new testapp
cd testapp
rails g scaffold person first_name:string last_name:string

now sit down and read through the generated code to see how rails WANTS 
to work.

You wouldn''t use a generated app for a real production application, but
as an educational tool, it''s a great way to get started.

Heck, I still scaffold a basic proof of concept when users come to me 
for the "next great addition" to our system.  They even expect the 
initial forms to be ugly but workable...
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