Mon, 17/12/2007 - 23:26 — peterv

Finally found time to pick-up my new Second Edition Rails book at HCW in Leuven last weekend. Starting to reread it an play around ... well the difference is striking. Already in the very first "Task A" connecting to the database (page 62) and creating the first table (page 64), the Second Edition now uses the clean approach of migrations to create table definitions (instead of the ugly manual sql CREATE TABLE ... that was still in the First edition op page 54). Now it gets really clean since changes to the database model are driven from versioned migrations.

Also, the form helpers that are described in the First Edition (page 355 in the First Edition) are deprecated in Rails version 2.0 ... (quite confusing that the examples from the First Edition book don't function anymore in Rails version 2.0, so far for backwards compatibility ...).

Upon further browsing, a lot seems to be added and improved. Also in sheer volume, we went from 558 to 719 pages. Another trick ... you can buy the book on paper and/or as PDF. The book is targeted for Rails 1.2, but I have the impression it is quite usable with Rails 2.0 as a starting point as well.

So, the conclusion for me (as a newcomer) is clear ... don't advise any other newcomer to use the "old" First Edition book and let her/him jump to the Second Edition at once.