Reviews for Rails Solutions: Ruby on Rails Made Easy

1. Fills a niche (but not very well)

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2008

   Ruby on Rails should be perfect for people who are new to programming. It's so logical, straightforward, time-saving yet powerful that it should have the absolute perfect learning curve from heaven.
   
   It's not, because there's no ruby on rails books that don't skip fundamental principles because the author assumes you are an experienced professional programmer who knows Java, Perl, PHP and/or Python.
   
   This book has "no programming knowledge required" written in bold letters on the cover. It's the only book I've found that explicitly aims at people without programming experience.
   
   It's a noble effort, but as a book it's not great. There's some things that are explained better and more clearly here than anywhere else. There's also plenty that are explained worse here than anywhere else. Also, the basic concept of the book - a cover-to-cover read built around a step by step guide to how to make an imitation Craigslist - is narrow, it only teaches some of the most core principles (although it does teach those well) and doesn't leave you much to move on with.
   
   Finally, it's not quite as beginner friendly as it thinks. Sometimes it does explain the crucial little details that other books assume you already know. However, often, the only difference between this and other books is an informal writing style and the ommission of important details. It feels a bit style over substance.
   
   If you get this book, get another beginner's book as well (probably Simply Rails 2 or the latest verson of Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers)) and consult this book when the other book leaves you baffled. There'll be times when it saves you, and there'll be times when it lets you down.

2. Hardly scratching the surface

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, February 12nd, 2007

   Just starting the introduction, the author refers to the major environments used in Web development: CGI and PERL, then ASP, then PHP. Not a single word about java (jsp, websphere, webobjects...), used in the majority of professional servers.
   I just looked at the session management, and found that 'storing session information in the data base is more secure'. Whoaww. Never thought about that. But no mention that this was designed for supporting farm of servers.
   I do not know if I'll read more, but clearly the author lacks some vision of what the problematics of web servers are and how Rails solves them.
   But to give some credits, whatever is explained in the book is pretty well explained, including how to install components, both on Windows and on MacOsX.