Product DescriptionMany Java developers are now looking at Ruby, and the Ruby on Rails web framework. If you are one of them, this book is your guide. Written by experienced developers who love both Java and Ruby, this book will show you, via detailed comparisons and commentary, how to translate your hard-earned Java knowledge and skills into the world of Ruby and Rails.
If you are a Java programmer, you shouldn't have to start at the very beginning! You already have deep experience with the design issues that inspired Rails, and can use this background to quickly learn Ruby and Rails. But Ruby looks a lot different from Java, and some of those differences support powerful abstractions that Java lacks. We'll be your guides to this new, but not strange, territory.
In each chapter, we build a series of parallel examples to demonstrate some facet of web development. Because the Rails examples sit next to Java examples, you can start this book in the middle, or anywhere else you want. You can use the Java version of the code, plus the analysis, to quickly grok what the Rails version is doing. We have carefully cross-referenced and indexed the book to facilitate jumping around as you need to.
Thanks to your background in Java, this one short book can cover a half-dozen books' worth of ideas:
Programming Ruby
Building MVC (Model/View/Controller) Applications
Unit and Functional Testing
Security
Project Automation
Configuration
Web Services
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Excellent starting point!
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.
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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.
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
- Excellent starting point!
- Incomplete and unorganized
- Gentle Introduction to Ruby on Rails for the Experienced Java Developer
