This book is an excellent start point for learning Rails. I suppose that all the Rails for ... Developers, if they follow the same line of the Java one, would be a better way on learning Rails for experienced developers.
Quick and easy to understand introduction to Rails for the Experienced Java Developer
The Good: This was an interesting book for me because it uses AppFuse for many of its Java-based examples. Unfortunately, it uses the Struts 1.x version which is cumbersome and verbose as far as Java web frameworks go. The most impressive part of this book is how Justin and Stu do an excellent job of walking the line and not insulting Java nor developers using it. They provide an easy to understand view of Rails from a Java Developer's perspective. There's detailed chapters on ActiveRecord (as it compares to Hibernate), ActiveController (compared to Struts) and ActiveView (compared to JSP). This book has excellent chapters on Testing, Automating the Development Process and Security.
The Bad: This book was published over a year ago, so it uses an older version of Rails. This means some commands don't work if you're using Rails 2.0. It's also a little light on Ruby, so I didn't feel I learned as much about the language as I was hoping to. That's understandable as it's more of a Rails book than a Ruby book.
Incomplete and unorganized
Sorry, the idea is nice and this book could be useful if not missing some very fundamental pieces of ruby language. Thus for example you will see variables prefixed with : coming into hash tables example with no explanation on what is symbols in Ruby when it's an important part of the paradigm. Worst you cannot find any reference on what are ruby symbols in index and there is no way to understand what you are reading.
Made me loosing some time, which is not what I expect from such a book.
Very Nice but not for everyone
I had started this book awhile ago, but then got distracted with various things and left it. I recently started reading it again and just finished it.
I have been puzzled by the relatively lower ranking of this book in the Amazon sales rankings compared to other Ruby/Ruby on Rails books. What is even more puzzling is the fact that amlost everyone who has bothered to write a review has given it full five starts including myself. Here is my guess on why is it so (I may be wrong):
This book assumes certain experience, skill set, knowledge, and sophistication on the reader's part. This means that the person should have a good deal of Java and more importantly J2EE knowledge and real-world experience both as a developer and architect. Unless one has suffered through the baggage that goes with "Enterprise Java", it is very hard to understand and appreciate what the authors are trying to say. Merely having played with J2EE/Java is not sufficient to enjoy this book and get something out of it. You have to lived through at least one complete life-cycle of a typical J2EE project to appreciate the fine points that the authors are making in this book.
One thing is clear to me: even though they try very hard to maintain a neutral posture throughout the book, given a choice, they would rather code Ruby and RoR than Java and J2EE (who wouldn't?).
If you have the necessary experience, knowledge, and skills; then the book becomes very useful. I have particularly enjoyed the later chapters of the book dealing with Testing, Rake, Web Services, and Security.
I hope that they continue to "push" the boundaries of Ruby on Rails knowledge and share it with the rest of us in their excellent writing style.
Gentle Introduction to Ruby on Rails for the Experienced Java Developer
In "Rails for Java Developers", Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland provide an introduction to Ruby and the Rails web application framework aimed at the Java developer more familiar with frameworks such as Struts and Hibernate. There's a lot of buzz in the Java community surrounding Ruby and Ruby on Rails so this title is quite timely.
Halloway and Gehtland provide a tutorial to learning Ruby and Rails by examining similarities with Java. The tutorial progresses by providing examples in both Ruby and Java using popular Java frameworks. The introduction of Ruby and Rails concepts by juxtaposing them with similar concepts implemented in Java is comforting for the developer who may feel a little intimidated by the differences between the languages. Working through the book, the Java developer will learn the basics about creating and deploying Ruby on Rails applications, picking up an exciting new language along the way.
The first three chapters introduce the Ruby programming language. This is the best Java-centric Ruby introduction that I've seen and it's something I wish I had available to me when I was first learning the language. The rest of the material covers the basics of Rails applications as well as web services and security issues. I found the chapters on testing and automating the development process to be particularly good.
The approach this book takes may not be suitable for everyone. After a certain point, I found that the constant juxtaposition of the Java way of accomplishing a task with the Ruby on Rails way of accomplishing a task wore a bit thin. I found myself just trying to skip past the Java bits to get on with the Ruby. Still, I found the book to be quite good overall. If you are an experienced Java developer seeking a gentle introduction to Ruby on Rails, you can't do better than "Rails for Java Developers".
