This is excellent news. Hartl's Rails Tutorial was easily one of the best tutorials for any full-stack framework that I've ever read.
Too many tutorials come up with overly-simplified examples that have no real utility. I hate looking at a tutorial that shows you how to build a toy app that is barely usable even by its own creator.
But Hartl's book takes you through one very feasible web app (a Twitter clone) while explaining common tools and practices in the process. TDD, Heroku, Git, Bundler, the works. When I finished the book, I showed it to some non-technical friends and we played with it for a while with absolutely no problems. Not once did I have to say "well, this is just a demo."
If you want to learn Rails, you won't find a better place to start than Hartl's Rails tutorial.
For someone new to Rails, but not to OOP/web dev/sysadmin, Hartl did a really great job on highlighting how to work through the many decisions that are already made for you in Rails, but also some nice Ruby tips. He would also be really good about keeping it up to date and adding errata where needed to fix minor inaccuracies.
Totally worth the money, from a guy who learned Ruby/Rails from him and Obie Fernandez's book and struck on independent contracting.
Something about it didn't click for me. It all felt very superficial. Sometimes the "rails way" doesn't mesh with the business logic you are required to implement.
I basically owe a large proportion of how I earn money today to Michael Hartl - spending $100 on his screencast a few years ago was the best investment I could have made.
RailsTutorial is holistic, practical, and very well paced for total beginners.
I find the Rails tutorial to be a terrible intro to Rails (unless if you're already a web dev, or a crack dev), but a fantastic intro to TDD with Rails. I recommend JumpStartLabs' Blogger tutorial as the best intro to Rails.
I have tentative plans at some point to make a product called something like Learn Enough Rails To Be Dangerous to fill this niche. The plan would be to cover just the basics of Rails, while largely omitting TDD. Leaving out TDD would definitely be easier on a beginner—but it would also undoubtedly make him dangerous.
I have tentative plans at some point to make a product called something like Learn Enough Rails To Be Dangerous to fill this niche. The plan would be to cover just the basics of Rails, while largely omitting TDD.
Awesome! I look forward to it!
Leaving out TDD would definitely be easier on a beginner—but it would also undoubtedly make him dangerous.
I would think the opposite actually: learning TDD often gives people a false sense of safety.
I've been working through the beta version of your Rails 4 book for the past couple of weeks, and it's been an absolutely stellar experience. As an experienced front-end web developer, I've not had proper experience with TDD before, but your book emphasises it's important while keeping it relatively easy. Only rarely have I transcribed some code without really understanding why or what it's for, and I feel like I genuinely get how my application (thus far) works.
My only concerns are with a few of the Rails conventions, which are probably due to my own conventions with JS and PHP.
Thank you for your awesome work. I'll definitely be buying a copy asap.
I just spent an hour trying to set up Rails. Failed when running rails server on some sqlite error. Mi googled the error but none of the suggestions have worked.
Rails Tutorial 2.3 not only taught me how to do Rails, but how to do web development. I had never made a non-static website before in my life or touched a line of Ruby code and I had no problem working through Hartl's tutorial. That really says something about the quality, most other framework books require years of web-dev knowledge and exposure to the language.
For someone who hadn't done web development in ten years and then wanted to get back into it with Rails, this tutorial (for v3.2) was perfect. As others have noted, it demystifies the whole stack, even including tools such as Sublime Text as related plugins. Hartl is a great instructor.
Came here to ask the same. Django is really missing a Hartl style tutorial. The Django tutorial is nice but need something with a bit more handholding for beginners.
I might add it in the full 3rd edition. The problem is that rvm and rbenv can't coexist on the same machine, so the barrier to using both is high. In particular, it means that I haven't been able to test rbenv myself, so I don't know it. I'd probably have to install, say, a Linux virtual machine just to use it.
That said, if you or someone you know would be willing to write up some material on rbenv to parallel the rvm instructions, I'd be happy to include it in the book. Please send any correspondence to admin at railstutorial dot org.
Too many tutorials come up with overly-simplified examples that have no real utility. I hate looking at a tutorial that shows you how to build a toy app that is barely usable even by its own creator.
But Hartl's book takes you through one very feasible web app (a Twitter clone) while explaining common tools and practices in the process. TDD, Heroku, Git, Bundler, the works. When I finished the book, I showed it to some non-technical friends and we played with it for a while with absolutely no problems. Not once did I have to say "well, this is just a demo."
If you want to learn Rails, you won't find a better place to start than Hartl's Rails tutorial.