Talk Like A Duck

The first edition of AWDWR came out a few months before Rails 1.0, and just like a car when you drive it off the lot, started depreciating rapidly. Rails introduced data migrations in 1.0, a major feature which was of course not documented by AWDWRed1. Then Rails 1.2 made significant changes to ActiveRecord, introduced rjs templates, and lots of other new features. The second edition which followed the first by a scant 18 months, covered Rails 1.2.3, but Rails continued to evolve. New features were added, old features were deprecated, and ultimately removed. By the release of Rails 2.0, the dynamic scaffolding which was used prominently in the books sample ‘depot’ app, had been removed from Rails, and newcomers to Rails kept asking on the forum how to use the book with the latest version. They were usually counseled to either find a different tutorial, or use an earlier version of Rails to work through the tutorial, and then learn the new stuff.

The last beta pdf version of the 3rd edition is up to date as of Rails 2.2. and that’s the version which will ship. This is just on the cusp of Rails 2.3 shipping, with more changes including the Rack integration I wrote about earlier today, so the book will once again start out slightly behind the curve.

That’s not to say that the book isn’t and won’t be valuable, and I’m looking forward to the postman dropping my copy on the front stoop.

Sam Ruby, who took over as primary author for the 3rd edition of AWDWR is well aware of the upcoming releases of rails, he reports that the new Rails 2.3 RC2 version looks much better than the first release candidate (although looking the comments on DHHs announcement earlier today there seem to be some remaining issues). More importantly, Sam has written a ruby script to allow him to track the ongoing Rails changes which affect the book, and to make this available to readers as the changes are officially released. Thanks Sam!