I'm really excited about this new edition, which is not just a cosmetic upgrade. Today marks the release of the first five chapters, as experience shows that getting early feedback is very useful. (Hacker News readers have proven to be particularly helpful, so thanks!) The other chapters are in good shape, and I expect to be able to release them at a good clip over the next few weeks. Chapters 6 and 7, due out next week, are particularly fun, putting the new 'has_secure_password' method to good use. There's plenty of other good stuff, including a full update of the RSpec coding style, so there's lots to look forward to in the coming weeks.
Just wanted to say thank you! I am a very happy customer of the 2010 release. The tutorial was easy to follow and I am about to launch my first rails app. I was actually blown away with how nice rails is and how your tutorial explained it. I'm coming from the php world and my life has been much easier. Thanks again! One more thing, it was nice to see how you configured your dev environment too. With the 4 terminal tabs, browser, and editor. I've copied it and happily working away.
Not happy with the direction my career was taking, I decided to learn Ruby (and Rails) about 8 months ago. Within a few months of that I got a Ruby gig that I totally love and am still doing. Of the resources available for learning Rails, I found Michael Hartl's tutorial to be the best by far and have recommended it to anyone and everyone who's asked me for advice on learning Rails since then.
So thank you, Mr. Hartl; I'm not sure where I'd be right now without your excellent tutorial!
Incidentally, I just completed the first edition of the tutorial and screencasts recently, and thought I might as well try to integrate the new testing tools in 2e beta. Unfortunately, guard-spork does not work on Windows and I wondered what happened to autotest (it works really well with Growl on Windows)
Hartl's book, site, and screencasts made Ruby on Rails genuinely fun. As a designer without any formal training in development I recommend this book — especially the paid screencast version — to everyone curious about Rails or trying to get into development.
Thank you Mike for making such a great product and for sharing so generously with the community. I know several people that learned rails through your work.
Excellent job on the 1st edition and I look forward to using the 2nd edition to jump start my Rails 3.2 learning! I find myself going back to the tutorial whenever I get stuck. Definitely a great way to get traction learning Rails. Thanks Michael!
Thanks for all the hard work on maintaining and updating Rails Tutorial. As a newbie programmer, the screen cap tutorials have been extremely helpful and I'm looking forward buying the 2nd edition screen caps as well.
