Ruby on Rails Tutorial (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

This book was recommended to me by a couple of people I respect. So, wanting to dive into Ruby, I took the plunge and purchased it. I even had it spiral bound because I'm a nerd and like for the book to lay flat when in use.Hartl has put a ton of thought and effort into this; it is thoughtfully approached and features plenty of accompanying images and sections of code that are easy to reference. My initial frustration came by page 24... a bit of language is used interchangeably when it would make more sense as a beginner for it to be more distinguished, and the instructions as they were laid out didn't work. Lots of googling, restarting from scratch, one reddit post, one email to Michael, and many frustrating hours later, I found out that the initial issue was that the Cloud9 IDE does not autosave. Yet saving is crucial for the server to run your updated code (for obvious reasons). Make sure you manually save before running the server.I ran into another issue when the text helps you set up a git repo. By this time, Michael Hartl himself got back to me, and this is where my opinion on this book began to turn around. He linked to a new video he made that addressed the first issue, he recognized the second issue and linked to the updated text on the RoR Tutorial webpage (there is an online version of the text for free), and he was also understanding and kind when it came to my snarky, frustrated pleas for help.He also replied to another commenter who was giving less than satisfactory advice. In his reply, he effortlessly provided reasoning, logic, and references as to why that was not something that should be recommended. This tells me that Hartl is the kind of person that not only knows what he is talking about, but can also easily guide people in the right direction with tact and without hubris. To me, when taken altogether, this makes whatever investment you can make in his books well worth it.

After a whirlwind 6 weeks, I'm proud to have built the twitter clone which passes all tests. This is the first programming book I've ever finished in its entirety, and I've tried and begun quite a few. Mr. Hartl has a gift for explaining things at an appropriate level of detail for beginners. The exercises are pitched just right, so that you build some independence and also feel smart enough to keep going.The book is kept updated so you won't really run into many hiccups. It doesn't feel "linear" like most textbooks; with each new chapter you will retread some old ground. I loved this approach, but some people might find it too verbose. To me, it mirrors physical practice and is a much more natural way of learning. I can say that things like "routing" and "resources" make a lot more sense after all the repetition.Since completing the book, I made a really simple app (basically a subset of the book's: a single Users resource, plus login/authorization) so that I could practice googling and referring to official Rails guides. It's challenging and I've had to debug a lot, but the Rails Tutorial gave me a great foundation. My app is now functional, with a suite of passing tests, after about 5 days. I wouldn't have thought I could accomplish something like this without going to a bootcamp or taking formal classes and it is basically 100% thanks to the book.To anyone considering starting: my advice is to be patient, work through it regularly so you don't regress, and keep learning on your own afterwards. You're in for a really great experience.

I first encountered Hartl's Rails Tutorial back in 2012, and it introduced me to so many aspects of software development that I hadn't dealt with before. He not only covered the entire process to produce a Rails from scratch, but he also included an introduction to test-driven development, proper source control methods, and cloud-based application hosting.Over the years I have followed as his tutorials have been updated to match current conditions and I have been looking forward to this latest version from him.

When I purchased the print version of the 5th edition in 2017 all I knew was that I wanted to change careers and I wanted to learn how to code. I completed the digital version of the tutorial late last year building on what I had learned in the previous addition as well as all the tutorials on the Learn Enough site. I now have a career running and building websites. Full disclosure, there is no silver bullet, or secret trick, you have to put in the work. But Michael Hartl gives you all of the tools you need, he won’t hold anything back in teaching you how to not only build applications but how to understand the eco-system. He gives you applied, functional problems that teach you how to develop for the real world using the extremely important technique of Test Driven Development. You will not regret buying this if you are serious about learning how to build applications for the web as a career.

This book is full of errors, I don't know if they were made on purpose so that you have to break your head trying to figure them out but even in stackoverflow nobody knows the answer. It is supposed to be a book to learn from scratch. I don't recommend it.