Through Chapter 2 of Rails Tutorial

I just completed Chapter 2 of the Rails Tutorial that I mentioned in my previous post. It has been a really enjoyable exercise. Every example has been clear and useful. I really like how time is spent on actually setting up your environment. The focus on Test Driven Development & Version Control right from the start also feels exactly right.

Another thing that I really appreciate about this book is that there are exercises where the answer isn’t right in front of you. It can be very easy to just follow the recipe and not learn as much if the exact steps are spelled out directly on the page. At the end of Chapter 2 there are a couple of exercises that I had to go back and read some material again. I want to stress that neither was difficult which is right in line with the goal of making this book for pure beginners. But you do have to use your brain a little bit which I appreciate.

The only thing I have skipped over so far is the setup of Autotest. I’ll go back and redo that section at some point, until then I’m happy hitting spec spec/ as much as needed.