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

	Title: RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) Purchase Item Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional List Price: $44.99 Our Price: $24.95
Customer Reviews:
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Greatg starter book for RoR
This book is teriffic. I started my journey into RoR by buying the two canonical starter books, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide and Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition. These are solid, rich repositories of information, but I was still having trouble understanding many concepts and techniques. Then I got this book. Concepts that had eluded me or been difficult suddenly became clear and intuitive. These authors really lead you by the hand through elements of RoR that may be unfamiliar to developers coming from other tools. The standard "starter" books are still must-haves for the would-be RoR developer, but I say this one is really the one to start with.
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Smacks of zealotry
You know you're in trouble when a nerd draws comparisons between anything on his computer and sex, and that's unfortunately what happens in the first few paragraphs of this book's introduction. That sort of attitude--which is later parroted mindlessly by the inexperienced schoolchildren who come to idolize their IRC superiors--is also what makes a lot of people hate Rails. It's an MVC framework, not the second coming. Nevertheless, there are times when it is simply the best tool for the job--like when you're roughing in an application whose ultimate behavior and purpose are nebulous and fluid. At times like these, you don't need anything that runs "well" or "quickly," you need something that lets you implement new ideas on a whim without any significant commitment that might lead to mental ossification or irrational attachment to something you spent too much time on. This book does a pretty good job of showing you how to do just that even if it does read like some Evangelical doctrine. At least Dave Thomas doesn't get any money out of it. Some of it's a bit outdated, but they have an errata page on their site, and it's not like you're supposed to use any of this code on a real production site anyway. I'd say it's worth picking up.
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Simply the most useful book for learning RoR
I have gone through this book several times and am still using it actively to learn Ruby on Rails. In my judgment, if you buy this book in conjunction with David Black's book "Ruby for Rails:..", you should be all set. Granted both books are a bit old considering that Rails 2.0.x is out, still nothing comes close in terms of the sheer usefulness from a learning point of view to these two books. I own several other Ruby and Ruby on Rails texts, but these are the two texts that I find myself frequently turning to. Initially, towards the beginning, it was David Black text, now increasingly so, it is this text. Both Michael and Aurelius are very bright and gifted educators and pretty good developers at the same time. I would look forward to buy another text by these two authors which takes off where this text leaves us and has been updated for Rails 2.0.x. Go for it gentlemen, I am cheering for you.
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Great learning tool!
An excellent example of building a simple Rails application from the ground up. Great for learning Rails, as following an example is a good way to make concrete something as flexible and generic as Rails. Kudos, Michael!
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Worth Buying
If you're contemplating or actually building a social-networking website in Rails this book is worth buying. You can learn a lot by going through it from start to finish, or just take a gander at the chapter(s) that concern you. I really like the way these two guys write. Their sense of humility is refreshing, and their ability to address the actual concerns that developers have is welcomed. If your site is social-network related, I also recommend "Practical Rails - Social Networking Sites". These two books should give you a great head-start or the final answer on any "How do I do that"? type of question.
RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) by Addison-Wesley Professional Product Description
Ruby on Rails is fast displacing PHP, ASP, and J2EE as the development framework of choice for discriminating programmers, thanks to its elegant design and emphasis on practical results. *RailsSpace* teaches you to build large-scale projects with Rails by developing a real-world application: a social networking website like MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster. Inside, the authors walk you step by step from the creation of the site's virtually static front page, through user registration and authentication, and into a highly dynamic site, complete with user profiles, image upload, email, blogs, full-text and geographical search, and a friendship request system. In the process, you learn how Rails helps you control code complexity with the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, abstraction layers, automated testing, and code refactoring, allowing you to scale up to a large project even with a small number of developers. This essential introduction to Rails provides A tutorial approach that allows you to experience Rails as it is actually used A solid foundation for creating any login-based website in Rails Coverage of newer and more advanced Rails features, such as form generators, REST, and Ajax (including RJS) A thorough and integrated introduction to automated testing The book's companion website provides the application source code, a blog with follow-up articles, narrated screencasts, and a working version of the RailSpace social network.