Book Review: Ruby For Rails
June 23, 2006
Ruby For Rails connects the dots between Ruby and Rails.
In a nutshell:
This book looks at how Rails uses Ruby, and in so doing, you learn a heck of a lot about Ruby programming.
Ruby For Rails goes into detail about basic Ruby, enough so that I think someone new to Ruby, could learn enough about the language to be able to build web applications. But, the book is not a comprehensive Ruby reference – there are things that are not talked about.
The thing I really liked about the book, is the way the author introduces a concept and then shows you how Ruby or Rails implements that concept in a practical application.
For example:
You are introduced to a Ruby construct called a ‘module’*.
- You learn what a module is.
- Why Ruby has modules.
- How Rails uses modules and why.
I am glad to have this book and think anyone interested in learning Ruby and /or Rails, should get it.
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* Ruby modules are programmatic constructs that are like classes (they have methods and constants,) but they are not directly instantiated like a true class.
Instead, modules are created to be inserted into to classes or objects to give the host class or object the extra functionality. Often modules are referred to as ‘mix-ins’ because modules are mixed in to classes.
