Articles on Book Reviews

A little more than a year ago, there really was only one Rails book: Agile Web Development with Rails, by Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, and friends. Since then, about a dozen Rails books have come out. None of them, however, has replaced this seminal book as the best general resource for Rails developers.

This is not to say that there have not been some excellent books. Some do a better job at providing a gentle entry for beginners, others focus on specific areas, and many provide interesting example applications. But they are mostly tutorials, rather than references.

The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

The Rails Way changes this. It is a better Rails reference than the Agile book, both because it provides more depth and because it is current with Rails 2.0. For the first time, there is a second book that is indispensable for any serious Rails developer.

The Rails Way is not a good book for someone new to Rails; there is no introductory overview, no Ruby tutorial, and no sample application. But as a reference, it is unmatched. It is very readable, despite being a reference work, because author Obie Fernandez has insights to share in almost every section. In skimming through the book, I found details in almost every section that I never quite understood before, which the books explains with sparkling clarity.

Even though it is intended primarily as a reference, The Rails Way is an outstanding tutorial for anyone who understands the basics of Rails and wants to dig deeper (and has a few days to spend reading). In this regard, it is true to its namesake book, Hal Fulton’s The Ruby Way, which holds a similar place in the Ruby world.

The Rails Way’s coverage is both deeper and broader than any other Rails book, in covering the Rails framework and associated plugins, tools, and attitudes. It weighs in at 850 pages, about 10% longer than the Agile book—and a third of the Agile book is the tutorial introduction and sample application.

If you’re working with Rails on anything but the most casual basis, you shouldn’t work without this book nearby.

With all the “how to build an application in Rails” books that have come out this year, do we need more? Yes!

RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

RailsSpace is a well-written, insightful introduction to Rails that uses the creation of a simple social networking application to tell the story. It’s not a reference book, and it may move too quickly for absolute beginners. But for more experienced readers who are new to Rails, or for Rails developers with some experience who are looking to learn a few new tricks and pick up some best practices, this is a great book. The step-by-step creation of the social network application (and thankfully not another shopping cart) provides a cohesive structure and creates natural opportunities to introduce a wide variety of topics.

Author Michael Hartl was previously a physics instructor at Caltech, and his teaching experience shows. The book progresses naturally, explaining just enough as it goes along to keep the reader oriented without too many diversions. This is a real challenge in an introductory Rails book, since there’s a lot of pieces you need to understand to some degree before it all makes sense. Coauthor Aurelius Prochazka is a very experienced web developer, and this too shows through. The book is full of insights and best practices that make it more than just an introductory text, and also make it an enjoyable read.

Although the book only scratches the surface of many advanced Rails topics and doesn’t go too far into Rest or Ajax, it covers well a number of topics that are often neglected in introductory books. Testing is addressed nicely; the book doesn’t use a test-driven development (TDD) approach, which interferes with learning the basics of Rails, but it does show how to test each feature after it is built. It also has a good section on searching, covering both the use of Ferret and the creation of searches using multiple, specific model fields.

There’s a companion web site, built using the code from the book, at which you can browse the source code. You can also download a sample chapter, RESTful Blogs.

Experienced Rails developers may want to wait for two very promising books due out later this year: Mike Clark and Chad Fowler’s Advanced Rails Recipes, and Obie Fernandez’s The Rails Way.

There’s a new Ruby book out that just may be the best resource for anyone getting started with Ruby, or who has been using Rails for a little while and feels they need stronger Ruby skills (which, I suspect, describes a great number of Rails programmers, myself included).

Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

Beginning Ruby is, despite its title, not just a beginner’s book. It does start at the beginning, and it is written without assuming a lot of background, but it is not a simplified, dumbed-down treatment. I found it to be very easy to read, and it follows a natural progression from language basics through a variety of advanced topics.

The author, Peter Cooper, is a very experienced Ruby programmer, and his insights shine throughout the book. Among many other things, he’s the creator of Feed Digest, Ruby Inside, and code snippets, which he sold to DZone. He was recently interviewed for the Rails Podcast.

In addition to an exposition of the language that builds nicely over the course of the book, there’s chapters on the Ruby ecosystem, how to design an application, and network programming. There’s also a chapter that covers many of the useful libraries and gems.

There is one chapter that summarizes Rails, but this is definitely a Ruby book, not a Rails book.

Any Ruby book will inevitably be compared to Dave Thomas’ Programming Ruby (commonly known as “the Pickaxe” for the image on its cover), which has been the standard reference for the language since its debut and won’t lose its spot as a reference work. I found Beginning Ruby to be easier to absorb, however, and I thought the examples were especially clear and useful. If you’re already deep into Ruby, you probably don’t need Beginning Ruby. But if you’re relatively early in the curve, I highly recommend this book.