Review of Ruby on Rails 4.0 Guide by Stefan Wintermeyer
I have been struggling to learn Ruby on Rails or just "Rails" for those in "The Know" for awhile. Learning Rails was a personal goal as I enjoyed programming in other Object Oriented Programming languages such as PHP, Visual Basic, and C# and wanted to learn a new web application framework in order to speed up my ability to create new applications.
There are many Ruby on Rails guides on the Internet but I have found that their examples were incomplete and requiring previous Rails knowledge or that the examples simply did not work!
Enter Ruby on Rails 4.0 Guide by Stefen Wintermeyer! This book does not rely on you having any previous knowledge of the Ruby language or Rails. The books starts by walking you through the process of installing the Ruby language and the Rails 4.0 Framework on the platform of your choice (Windows, Mac OS, Linux) followed by a great tutorial of the Ruby language done by example. Next up in the book is the study of ActiveRecord, the means of having your Rails app access an SQL database. The book goes into creating Scaffolding, Routes, and Forms for a Rails application finally covering how to put a web server into production.
This is a step by step Ruby on Rails 4.0 Guide, the author provides the code for each example that you can directly type into the console of a Ruby on Rails server that you built. In addition the book shows the results of the commands to keep you on track.
ALL examples from this book worked for me! There were a couple examples that initially I couldn't get to work but under closer scrutiny I noticed one of more syntax errors.
The author, Stefen Wintermeyer, is responsive when asked questions via e-mail and truly seems to enjoy the subject.
I recommend this book to anyone who has a basic understanding of Object Oriented Programming and has the desire to learn the Ruby and Rails application framework!
Stefan Wintermeyer, author of Ruby on Rails 4.0 Guide, describes the importance Cache has on the performance of a web site built on Rails.
