Ruby on Rails Tutorial (3rd Ed.) Learn Web Development with Rails Michael Hartl

by Tom G on September 19, 2015 at 11:34 Verified Buyer

This book is where I started with Rails and I am very glad I did. Even for someone with limited experience of Ruby, this was pitched just right. I would go and do the Ruby course at Codecademy first if you know no Ruby at all. I finished the book knowing my way around Rails quite well. I have two observation on how the book might be improved. Firstly it does not deal with Ajax calls for Rails partials, which is surely an important part of any website these days. Secondly, I wish there had been a bit more on creating your own classes in Rails. Still, I thoroughly recommend this book and read each chapter at least twice!

by Holly G. on September 13, 2015 at 13:21

After pouring through several Ruby programming books, I felt ready to tackle Rails. Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial provides in-depth, yet, easy to follow examples of Ruby in action. I strongly recommend this book to anybody interested in learning to build applications using Ruby on Rails.

by Iraneus on September 09, 2015 at 07:41

the tutorial style is lovely.

by Jim McMahon on September 07, 2015 at 09:07 Verified Buyer

With close to 17 years in IT, mainly in network and server admin roles, I'm not a complete novice, but I was not able broaden my skill-set into coding due to the steep learning curve I encountered with the languages I attempted and the lack of relatively short time frame to accomplishing worth-while projects. The Rails Tutorial has essentially removed those obstacles for me, based on both Rails itself and Micheal's fine writing. Logically and concisely laid-out, the tutorial guides those wishing to learn web-development through a step-by-step progression that ultimately results in a solid understanding of Rails and the web-development process. The inclusion of version control basics and cloud-based IDE make this book especially valuable to beginners and are stand-out features not found in any other text I've encountered.

Thank you, Micheal, for a job well-done.

by Derick H on August 29, 2015 at 09:22

Great resource for learning professional Ruby on Rails development.

by Nzinga R. on August 26, 2015 at 01:09

I'm actually a beginner in developer, programmer world and I chose Ruby on Rails as one of my tools to start with. It seems to be very simple to follow.

by Ashish on August 25, 2015 at 02:07

i think this the best book for beginners to start with ruby on rails

by Kiwa on August 23, 2015 at 14:28

Great tutorial!

by Tiago Ameller on August 23, 2015 at 01:08 Verified Buyer

The materials covered by this book are explained at fine grain level. Every step is covered with a lot of related foot notes and testing. TDD is an important part of the tutorial.
The best:
Starts from zero
You can run all samples in the cloud with any operating system
Advocates testing
The authentication and security chapters

The worst:
Covers a too little for build your first real project
Due incremental approach of the tutorial, it's not suitable for random read, you must follow the chapters.

by ZA on August 22, 2015 at 18:11 Verified Buyer

If you want to learn rails, with no experience and become confident developing, then this is a great start.

For a newbie, this is tough to learn.  Almost like a new language.  However Michael's ability to transform the complex into meaningful steps is first class.

by Guillaume Maka on August 22, 2015 at 16:55 Verified Buyer

Ruby on Rails Tutorial is the first book I bought when I started learning Rails development (Thanks to Ryan Bates at Railscast.com to promote this book in his screencast) and until now I'll stick with it. So far I loved the 1st and 2nd edition especially the screencast version (I"m mostly a watcher than a reader). 

As the previous edition, this 3rd edition is well written, Michael Hartl is really a good writer and an excellent teacher. The book cover Rails 4 and all best practices to develop well written Rails applications.

I give this book a 4 stars rather than 5 because my only regret is the disappearance of  Rspec and Capybara for TDD/BDD from the 1st and 2nd edition but its a must have in your dev library.

by Suti T on August 22, 2015 at 08:42

This is my first book to learn Ruby on Rails and I'm glad I found this one (3rd edition). Great step-by-step guide for complete beginner like me.

by Diego Buendía on August 22, 2015 at 05:54

I've been working on the online version of RoR tutorial by Michael Hartl and I think it's a very good learning tutorial. Maybe sufficient to recomend the paper version, although I don't like them as they become outdated quickly.
Some strenghts of this tutorial:
1.- It works like a charm. Mr. Hartl avoid the common infrastructure mess of a custom installation by providing an online desktop properly configurated. In it, all the code works without cryptic errors due to gems outdated or uninstalled. I think it's the best approach I've ever seen. The closest thing I've seen is running a taylored virtual machine, but the online desktop is still cleaner. So, you can be sure that if there are errors in the code are your fault, and not a misconfiguration issue.
2.- From zero to deploy approach. It's dazzling to see a 'Hello world' app become a production app. Mr. Hartl introduces the deploy from the very beginning, using the Heroku resources. You won't ask you never again if your developed app will run fine on production, as you'll be testing it frequently.
3.- Test driven design. Also interesting for a traditional programmer as me it's been the TDD focus. The unit and integration tests are present from the beginning, trying to create a habit on the reader. I must say that by the end of the tutorial I'm a convinced one.
The only pitfall I've found is the length of some chapters, particularly those devoted to authentication and log in. It's not completely Mr. Hartl fault, but maybe mine, as I tend to study for full chapters, and those ones were a little agony for me.

by James Hamilton on August 22, 2015 at 02:14

An easy way to get started with Ruby on Rails, from development to production. What made this book stand out to me is that it demonstrates the entire development process from initial Rails installation to deployment to a production environment. Since it covers such a wide range of topics it cannot go into great detail on any one subject (several important implementation details are demonstrated so the reader can use the technology, but not actually explained) and the reader is directed towards Michael Hartl's favoured development stack (cloud9 IDE for development, Heroku for deployment) but these are not actually flaws - simply a necessity for enabling the reader to easily build and deploy an app in such a short time period. The section on user authentication is very good and leaves the reader in the position to use gems such as Devise in future developments which makes developing your future apps much easier. Overall, very good.

by C cordero on August 21, 2015 at 23:51

Good book. Buy if you have a lot disposable income.  Now give me the command line book?  (Yes--I was bribed to write a review).  Pathetic-yes!  But the ROR book is not terrible.  If you are an author, and know ROR--this area of study is hot!  It is in dire need of good writers?  Write your own ROR book?  As computer books go Hartl's book is one of the better ones.  That's a compliment to Hartyl, but the bar is very low.  For some reason, I don't think I've ever read a computer related book that when I finished, said, "Wow--that was a brilliant read, and crafted so tight.  It's was edited brilliantly, and doesn't need improvement."  I am available as a editor by the way.  I know how to remove verbosity.  I know enough of ROR to really help--I think?  I think computer books are so terribly written is because the typical editor doesn't have a clue to what the author is trying to explain?  Yes, they have the fancy English degree, but they need to understand the subject matter too?

by Heath L on August 21, 2015 at 20:12

With a background that included scientific coding, but no web development experience, this tutorial got me leveraging the MVC architecture fairly quickly.

by SACKO Idriss on August 21, 2015 at 12:46 Verified Buyer

I never looked at a book on ruby ​​on rails much like this.

by Amir on August 21, 2015 at 12:05

Hi All:

I like this book since it is easy to read and follow and doing each step clearly and with adequate explanations dedicated to each part.

by Daniel Steffy on August 21, 2015 at 11:48 Verified Buyer

I've been in software development for just a little while now, and it's mainly been in C#. I've heard a lot about Ruby and Ruby on Rails and always wanted to learn about it. This tutorial takes you through the entire process from start to end with a fairly complex webapp to finish the book off. Really great book and very helpful to get me where I want to go.