Book Review: “Build your own Ruby on Rails Web Applications” by Patrick Lenz

So I just finished Patrick Lenz’s Ruby on Rails book. It’s really good! This book is aimed at software developers who have a bit of web development experience, but have never touched Ruby on Rails.

Patrick gives the reader a gentle overview of objects, the MVC pattern, and the Ruby language before diving into his example application (a Digg.com-like Web 2.0 app). His example-driven teaching demonstrates how you can use Ruby on Rails in the real world. Development is fast!!

For the past several years, I have spent most of my professional life developing Java apps for large companies (Swing, Struts and JSF). Like most people, I’ve tried to balance that out with some more exciting environments like PHP, Objective-C, and other cool, weird frameworks. (Side note, check out CakePHP if you’re limited to a pure PHP environment. It’s very similar to Rails.)

This book had just the right amount of detail for me. Ruby is very natural and readable. The chapter that Patrick introduces the language, highlights where a new developer should pay attention. I’m definitely going to keep the PDF version of this book on hand as a great reference while I get more comfortable with Rails.

The only small criticism I have of the book is the amount of time dedicated to unit testing. Don’t get me wrong; I love automated testing. Writing a test case is a great way to describe how the system works, as well as a way to buy some insurance that what works today will work tomorrow. Tons of projects would seriously benefit from test-driven development. However, I believe that developers should spend more time on writing solid functional tests rather than simple, basic, voluminous unit tests. I rarely find any value in testing every single getter & setter on a model. That being said, Patrick’s functional testing sections (especially the ones that tested the views) were very exciting. I have a feeling I’m going to like test-driven development in Ruby on Rails.

Even though this book was released almost a year ago (January 2007), I still think it’s a great read. Patrick covers Rails 1.2 in the book, and almost everything from the book worked without a hitch. From what I hear about Rails 2.0, it’s more of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary upgrade. Check out Ryan Daigle’s post for a thorough list of everything new in 2.0.

Ruby on Rails is an exciting framework, and I can’t wait to develop some of the ideas that have been kicking around in my head. If you’ve been wanting to try out Rails, go get this book!

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/

I highly recommend the DRM-free PDF version of his book. Really, all developer books should be available in a simple PDF format (copy & pasting code snippets, portability, bookmarking and searching for later reference, easy storage & backup, good for the environment, cheaper production costs…).