Product Description

Ready to transport your web applications into the Web 2.0 era? Head First Rails takes your programming -- and productivity -- to the max. You'll learn everything from the fundamentals of Rails scaffolding to building customized interactive web apps using Rails' rich set of tools and the MVC framework.

By the time you're finished, you'll have learned more than just another web framework. You'll master database interactions, integration with Ajax and XML, rich content, and even dynamic graphing of your data -- all in a fraction of the time it takes to build the same apps with Java, PHP, ASP.NET, or Perl. You'll even get comfortable and familiar with Ruby, the language that underpins Rails. But you'll do it in the context of web programming, and not through boring exercises such as "Hello, World!"

Your time is way too valuable to waste struggling with new concepts. Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, Head First Rails uses a visually rich format designed to take advantage of the way your brain really works.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41438 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 429 pages

About the Author
David Griffiths began programming at age 12, after being inspired by a documentary on the work of Seymour Papert. At age 15 he wrote an implementation of Papert's computer language LOGO. After studying Pure Mathematics at University, he began writing code for computers and magazine articles for humans and he is currently an agile coach with Exoftware in the UK, helping people to create simpler, more valuable software. He spends his free time traveling and time with his lovely wife, Dawn.

Customer Reviews

An Absolute Godsend
I have been trying to find out about Rails for a while now and have found a lot of the information and training is for older versions, boring, or doesn't make sense. If you are a windows user and want to explore rails and get up to speed on the core basics Just download instant rails and follow this book. It's the most enjoyable, easiest to follow book I have ever read. I never write reviews but was so overjoyed with this book I was compelled to write something.

This is a complete book for beginners on the subject. If you are already upto speed with some of rails functionality, it may be worth looking elsewhere for something more indepth and chunky.

Beginners - I Love This Book!!!!!!!!!!!

On the right lines
I've used Head First books before and was looking forward to working thorugh this one to bring my knowledge into the 21st century. Like all Head First books, it is well thought out, entertaining and contains lots of useful exercises to help you understand things. A couple of provisos - the scenario they gave where you were going to help out a friend by creating a complete application in a weekend became a bit ironic. This was because the version of Rails that I picked up didn't have SQLite3 (the database engine) in it any more, which stopped things in their tracks so to speak. It was fairly easy to download it separately, but even then it didn't work without quite a bit of trawling the web to find the rather obscure command to get it talking to Rails properly. Not HF's fault, but perhaps they could have put more info on their website. Speaking of which, when you had to download things from the HF website to do exercises, it wasn't always immediately obvious which bits you needed.

Otherwise it did what it said on the tin and I can recommend it.

Totally tripendicular, baby
Risking black-balling from the lifelong Perl camp and having learned Ruby via a so-so stramash of Ruby books I decided to find out what all the fuss was about with this Rails malarkey and bought Head First Rails as my book.

All I can say is, this is a fabulous book, a novel and effective way of teaching something, and Rails is looking very interesting indeed. I've been working through it after work (I should get a life, I know, but it's summer and the digital TV signal has died behind the leafy trees) and didn't get bored at all. Armed with new found knowledge have now ordered another book to maybe come at it from a different angle. Or maybe not.

Now if UK ISPs got their act together with hobbyist Rails hosting...