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Section :: books
There are now numerous books about Ruby On Rails and, before buying one, the question you must inevitably ask yourself is: ”So what’s different about this one...?” The answer to that question, according to the publisher of Rails Solutions, is ease of use or, as the blurb on the front of the book rather terrifyingly puts it, “no programming knowledge required”.
This claim, I have to say, immediately prejudiced me against the book. It is my firm belief that anyone creating a web site using a framework as complex as Rails and a language as powerful as Ruby damn’ well should have some programming knowledge. But, as the old saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover; so let’s see what the contents have to offer...
In around 260 pages, Rails Solutions leads the reader through the basics - What is Ruby? What is Rails? How to install Rails on Mac OS X and Windows (Linux is ignored) - and then moves on to development issues: creating models and controllers, validating data, migrations, ‘Bringing Forms To Life With Ajax’ and so on.
The chapters are all nicely laid out and divided up into bite-sized chunks, often starting with a question: ‘How Does Rails Do Ajax?’ or a brief description of the subject that follows: ‘Using helper methods in views’. There are a few screenshots to show you what you should see in your browser and a few diagrams to help explain object orientation, Rails migrations and so forth. For a book aimed at non-programmers there is also a surprising amount of program code.
Don’t Panic!
This is where the problem really lies. The author of this book is attempting to tackle an impossible task. Its opening paragraph states the problem:
"The book covers the Ruby on Rails programming framework, but don’t let that frighten you. Unlike many other programming books out there, this one isn’t written for programmers. This is a book for web designers and developers who are not at home with when trawling through reams of code."
I’m afraid I have a picture in my mind of a non-programming web designer getting to page 6 of this book and hitting the sentence, “Object-orientated programming is built on three basic principles: inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism,” and suddenly experiencing a panic attack. By the time the poor sucker gets to page 11 (an easy introduction to Models, Views and Controllers), the author’s admission that “You might be a bit confused by now,” will probably strike a chord, though the soothing assertion, “Don’t worry. After you start working with Rails, you won’t even realize that you are working in a design pattern,” may not be entirely convincing.
Let me not spin out the agony any further. Fundamentally, I am not criticising the book itself which is perfectly decent. What I am criticising is its marketing. If this were really aimed at web designers rather than programmers, where are the chapters on using web design tools such as Dreamweaver? In my view, this would be a fine book for someone with experience in programming Ruby, or another object oriented language, who wants a fairly quick-and-easy way into Rails (though it is not as good, in my opinion, as O’Reilly’s Ruby On Rails Up and Running). If it were marketed at such, my review would be a good deal more favourable. Targeting non-programming web designers, however, is wilfully misguided.
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Forum
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Rails Solutions: Ruby On Rails Made Easy
17 April 2007, by Chris Mills
I’m Chris Mills, the editor of this book, and I think this review was a little unfair (ok, obviously no editor or author likes to see a bad review of one of their books.) But anyhow, the whole point of the book was to provide a softly softly guide to using Rails for non-programmers/designers to get their teeth into, that gently takes them through the topic area, to make sure they don’t get lost/confused. Just because a book is aimed at a designer/non-programmer, doesn’t mean it has to contain stuff about Dreamweaver - that’s a bit of a strange thing to say. It’s more about explaining the concepts in an easy a way as possible, without blinding the reader with too much syntax and terminal commands. I think the book does a good job of this.
And I think the claim of "no programming knowledge required" is a fair one - it gives you all the basics you need to know, and as long as you have basic knowledge of HTML/CSS/General web design and development principles, you should be able to use it.
best regards,
Chris Mills
Senior editor
Apress/friends of ED
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Rails Solutions: Ruby On Rails Made Easy
17 April 2007, by Huw Collingbourne
Thank you for your comments. I entirely stand by my review, however. This book is, in my considered opinion, completely unsuitable for a person with no programming knowledge. Basic HTML/CSS experience is certainly not going to be very helpful with an understanding of the programming concepts described. I am truly surprised that you think it is.
I am also surprised that you feel that a discussion of Dreamweaver would be out of place in a book apparently aimed at web page designers. Dreamweaver is the de facto standard application for web page design and, in my opinion, being able to design fully formed web layouts is likely to be the biggest single challange that a designer would face when trying to work with Rails layouts/views and partials.
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Rails Solutions: Ruby On Rails Made Easy
20 April 2007, by Chris Mills
Thanks Huw - this is something I am prepared to agree to disagree on, if it comes to that. I also want to thank you for taking the time to review the book. But there’s a couple more points I’d like to make:
1. I agree that Dreamweaver is a subject that web designers would want to know about, however, I don’t think it’s in scope for a Ruby on Rails book. The idea of this book is it uses very simple steps to try to teach non-programmers the basics of using the Rails framework. Things like page layouts would be the scope of a different book. Also, I think you’ll find that opinion is divided between web designer/developers about WSIWYG tools such as Dreamweaver. Many professional front end designers abhor the use of such tools, because the markup/CSS they create is often less than elegant.
2. We deliberately kept the discussion of programming concepts very simple because we thought that too much detail would overwhelm non-programmers - we wanted to get past the theory to the practical as soon as possible, and we thought that a lot of this book’s audience wouldn’t really care about such details - they just want to get something up and running as easily as possible - they’re not aiming to become professional programmers. This isn’t just random guesswork on my part - I have talked to quite a lot of people who feel this way about dynamic web development.
best regards,
Chris Mills
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Rails Solutions: Ruby On Rails Made Easy
20 April 2007, by Huw Collingbourne
I can understand your views and I guess there may indeed be some designers who are capable of taking in the concepts of object orientation, the specifics of Ruby, the principles of MVC and get down to some productive Rails development in a few easy steps. But I suspect they are rather few and far between 
Suffice to say, as a professional programmer (currently a developer of a Ruby IDE as it happens) and technical author (usually of programming tutorials) with over 20 years experience, it took me a heck of a lot longer than that to get to grips with Ruby, let alone with Rails. Moreover, I truly am extremely suspicious of the current fashion for portraying Rails as a sort of ’look-no-programming’ quick route to instant Web 2.0 gratification. I’ve had more to say on that in this article: Ruby Off The Rails. So, I guess, this book pushed all my buttons...
I don’t really agree with you that the concepts in the book are ’simple’ - they might be to a programmer (though not that simple even then!); but not to the claimed target audience whose only ’coding’ knowledge is XHTML and CSS. I mean, look at the way the book introduces code samples and techniques: OOP, encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritence, scoping, symbols, instance variables, methods, constructors, hashes etc. are all either mentioned or, if not, are used in example code by page 10! As I said in my review, this isn’t a bad book and I am not attacking its author. But I really, really do believe that it is addressed at the wrong target audience.
As for Dreamweaver. OK, I accept that isn’t an ’essential’ in a book such as this. However, if the book had made more of an effort at addressing ways in which Rails can cooperate with the tools which many professional web designers are already using (and a great many are using Dreamweaver or, if not, some other visual web design tool such as GoLive, FrontPage etc.) then I think I would have felt that it was at least talking to designers about the problems of designers.
Bottom line: Ruby is a complex language; Rails is a complex framework. I don’t think the ambitions of this book (to explain Ruby and Rails to non-programmers in about 250 pages without really getting to grips with the nitty-gritty details - i.e. the difficult stuff - of Ruby and Rails) is an achievable goal. The author’s had a decent try at it. But it’s an impossible task.
best wishes
Huw
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Rails Solutions: Ruby On Rails Made Easy
20 May 2007
I just had a look at Clinical Surgery, Second Edition on amazon — where are the chapters on using the Operation board game?!
Saying that this book (or Rails) isn’t suitable for ’professional’ designers who use Dreamweaver or FrontPage really is not the same as arguing it isn’t suited to professional designers....
I’m sure most people would agree that if you aren’t capable (or, for that matter, comfortable) writing html and css and in a text editor, Rails is a leap too far (as would be basic Javascript — how many ’professional’ designers don’t know some javascript? ...How can you be a professional designer in 2007 and not know about instance variables and more advanced subjects like DOM-orientated design...)
The absolute worst advice you can give someone who wants to learn html/css or build websites is to buy a copy of Dreamweaver, this book is surely better for not having a chapter on the subject.
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