First I want to make clear who this book will and won’t benefit. If you are a real programmer, not someone like me with just a smattering of PHP and JavaScript, you will find this book entirely too basic. It is a true Dummies book, an introduction not a complete course. If you tried the Ruby on Rails (RoR) bible, Agile Web Development with Rails, and found it a bit over your head, you should find this an kinder and gentler primer.

Ruby on Rails for Dummies assumes absolutely no prior programming experience. It doesn’t even assume any command line knowledge. It does assume a decent grounding in HTML and CSS, but that’s true of any web based programming book. Going directly from a visual web layout tool to RoR will be too big a leap. It would be like trying to complete a 10 K run after practicing by jogging a mile three times a week for a month or so. You might get through it but the process would be more than a bit painful. But if you have your hand coding chops but no real programming background you should find this book a fine and gentle introduction to Ruby on Rails.

It made a number of ideas clear that the Agile book assumed I was already familiar with. It provides a nice quick start to RadRails, a fee RoR development environment, which somewhat insulates you from the straight command line approach taken my more advanced RoR texts and provides a pre-packaged Ruby on Rails development environment. There is also a short introduction to the Ruby programming language. It’s very basic but probably helpful

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Ruby on Rails for Dummies proceeds step-by-step through a couple of very simple RoR applications. It’s enough to get your feet wet and make more advanced books approachable. It does not provide enough of a knowledge base to actually go out and start developing web applications. You’ll still need to get a more advanced book but at least you will have a decent foundation on which to build.

The book uses Windows examples. Don’t worry, RadRails is a Java application and fully cross platform. Rails should run on OS X version 3 or later. There are thorough Rails OS X installation instructions at the HIVELOGIC Narrative and a sample chapter of the book (PDF) from the book’s website.

$29.99 list – $19.79 at Amazon.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.