[ADV] Second Edition of Agile Web Development with Rails

ruby-talk
1

ANNOUNCING AGILE WEB DEVELOPMENT WITH RAILS, SECOND EDITION

···

===========================================================

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/

Rails has changed a lot since we announced the first edition of the
book a year ago. DHH says that the 1.1 release "boasts more than 500
fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors." Who
are we to disagree?

To celebrate the release of Rails 1.1, we're delighted to announce
the second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. This is a
major update to the original, and we're releasing it as a beta book.

So far, we've rewritten the Depot application chapters. They now
illustrate new Rails features such as RJS templates for Ajax support
and "has_many :through". We've lost the SQL in favor of migrations,
and even include an rxml example, so we can show off RESTful
interfaces and "respond_to." It uses the new rake tasks, keeps its
sessions in the database, and generally tries to follow all the
latest Rails programming recommendations (including dropping things
that are likely to become deprecated over time). The testing chapter
supports transactional fixtures, shows new features, and illustrates
the new integration testing framework.

Over the coming months, we'll be updating the rest of the book. The
Rails core chapters will be revamped to show all the changes to
ActiveRecord, ActionController, and ActionView. The Web2.0 chapter
will be rewritten to illustrate RJS; and the deployment chapter
rewritten to use Capistrano and to show how to set Rails up in
production. All in all, the book will be significantly updated to
illustrate all we've learned about writing Rails applications in the
last year.

All this represents a bunch of totally new content---entirely new
chapters and largely rewritten old ones.

Today, we're releasing this new edition as a beta book. As with all
our beta books, you'll be able to download updates as we add new
content, and then, after we complete the book, continue to download
changes to this second edition. We anticipate that the book will be
finished in the fall, at which point the paper copies will ship.

However, we're doing this beta book slightly differently to our
other ones. Rather than releasing just the new content as it becomes
available, we're instead releasing a hybrid that mixes the new
content with that of the original, first edition. That way you'll be
able to use the beta book as a complete reference that gets updated
over time. Each chapter is color coded: ones with a gray header are
from the first edition, while those from the second have a red
header.

From May 2nd onwards, if you buy the AWDwR PDF, you'll be getting
the beta book version. If you want the paper book, you'll have the
choice of buying the first edition now or buying the second edition
that will ship when it's ready.

If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book. We'll be sending you instructions by email over
the next few days. (If you have a spam blocker, we suggest
whitelisting pragprog.com and pragmaticprogrammer.com--you'd be
amazed how often our PDF download e-mails get bounced.)

Visit the book's page at http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails
to see samples from the new chapters and check out the changes for
yourself. Be sure to visit the "in-place upgrade" link to see how the
process works.

We're really excited to be able to offer the most up-to-date
information on the amazing Rails framework. If you're a Rails
developer, we think you'll find this book an invaluable companion.

Regards

Dave Thomas

2

No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?

20% off? Anything? :slight_smile:

···

On 5/2/06, Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book.

--
Greg Donald
Zend Certified Engineer
MySQL Core Certification
http://destiney.com/

3

Dave Thomas wrote:

ANNOUNCING AGILE WEB DEVELOPMENT WITH RAILS, SECOND EDITION

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/

Rails has changed a lot since we announced the first edition of the
book a year ago. DHH says that the 1.1 release "boasts more than 500
fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors." Who
are we to disagree?

To celebrate the release of Rails 1.1, we're delighted to announce
the second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. This is a
major update to the original, and we're releasing it as a beta book.

...

If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book. We'll be sending you instructions by email over
the next few days. (If you have a spam blocker, we suggest
whitelisting pragprog.com and pragmaticprogrammer.com--you'd be
amazed how often our PDF download e-mails get bounced.)

What's the latest PDF version available for people who bought the first edition?

I have one from around Christmas 2005. It covers, I think, Rails version ~0.13

···

--
James Britt

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
  - D. Boorstin

4

I just purchased it ... PDF only ... and I'm impressed. I have a
question though. Where is the Rails schedule in relation to the
publishing schedule for the book? Rails is at 1.1.2 right now, by the
time the paper book is ready/beta period ends, where will Rails be? 1.2?
1.9.6?? 2.0?

Dave Thomas wrote:

···

ANNOUNCING AGILE WEB DEVELOPMENT WITH RAILS, SECOND EDITION

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/

Rails has changed a lot since we announced the first edition of the
book a year ago. DHH says that the 1.1 release "boasts more than 500
fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors." Who
are we to disagree?

To celebrate the release of Rails 1.1, we're delighted to announce
the second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. This is a
major update to the original, and we're releasing it as a beta book.

So far, we've rewritten the Depot application chapters. They now
illustrate new Rails features such as RJS templates for Ajax support
and "has_many :through". We've lost the SQL in favor of migrations,
and even include an rxml example, so we can show off RESTful
interfaces and "respond_to." It uses the new rake tasks, keeps its
sessions in the database, and generally tries to follow all the
latest Rails programming recommendations (including dropping things
that are likely to become deprecated over time). The testing chapter
supports transactional fixtures, shows new features, and illustrates
the new integration testing framework.

Over the coming months, we'll be updating the rest of the book. The
Rails core chapters will be revamped to show all the changes to
ActiveRecord, ActionController, and ActionView. The Web2.0 chapter
will be rewritten to illustrate RJS; and the deployment chapter
rewritten to use Capistrano and to show how to set Rails up in
production. All in all, the book will be significantly updated to
illustrate all we've learned about writing Rails applications in the
last year.

All this represents a bunch of totally new content---entirely new
chapters and largely rewritten old ones.

Today, we're releasing this new edition as a beta book. As with all
our beta books, you'll be able to download updates as we add new
content, and then, after we complete the book, continue to download
changes to this second edition. We anticipate that the book will be
finished in the fall, at which point the paper copies will ship.

However, we're doing this beta book slightly differently to our
other ones. Rather than releasing just the new content as it becomes
available, we're instead releasing a hybrid that mixes the new
content with that of the original, first edition. That way you'll be
able to use the beta book as a complete reference that gets updated
over time. Each chapter is color coded: ones with a gray header are
from the first edition, while those from the second have a red
header.

From May 2nd onwards, if you buy the AWDwR PDF, you'll be getting
the beta book version. If you want the paper book, you'll have the
choice of buying the first edition now or buying the second edition
that will ship when it's ready.

If you bought a first edition PDF from us on or after April 1st,
2006 (order numbers 27140 and above), you qualify for a free upgrade
to the beta book. We'll be sending you instructions by email over
the next few days. (If you have a spam blocker, we suggest
whitelisting pragprog.com and pragmaticprogrammer.com--you'd be
amazed how often our PDF download e-mails get bounced.)

Visit the book's page at http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails
to see samples from the new chapters and check out the changes for
yourself. Be sure to visit the "in-place upgrade" link to see how the
process works.

We're really excited to be able to offer the most up-to-date
information on the amazing Rails framework. If you're a Rails
developer, we think you'll find this book an invaluable companion.

Regards

Dave Thomas

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com

5

"Greg Donald" <gdonald@gmail.com> writes:

No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?

20% off? Anything? :slight_smile:

The last page of the 1st edition paper book says that you can purchase
the PDF for $8.80 if you've bought the paper one. I see no reason why
this should be limited to the first edition of the PDF, since that
technically no longer exists. I don't know about if you have the old
PDF though.

-Phil Hagelberg

6

Greg Donald wrote:

No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?

Yeah that would be nice. Never bought a book that was outdated within a year...

Regards,

Peter

7

I think that's the latest. There a list of versions in a drop-down
list on the web page of the errata of the first edition
(http://books.pragprog.com/titles/rails/errata). The latest version in
that list is "P4.0 - December 24". I have no idea if that list is a
complete list, but I'd imagine it is.

Jeff

9

I understand that there is no reasonable expectation for a discount
against the dead tree edition. Additionally, I can see why you would
not necessarily want to provide free pdf upgrades. I want Dave to
continue developing the book and have no problem paying for the
privilege. Of course it may be good business to offer a discount on
the pdf for repeat combo purchasers :slight_smile:

pth

···

On 5/2/06, Peter C. Verhage <peter@no-nonsense.org> wrote:

Greg Donald wrote:
> No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?

Yeah that would be nice. Never bought a book that was outdated within a
year...

Regards,

Peter

10

Well, to be fair, it wasn't us that outdated it, but the changes to Rails. We could have kept the first edition as it was.

The decision to create a second edition was an incredibly hard one: it's a commitment to many, many months of effort to produce. During that time, the availability of a second edition beta will be hurting sales of the first edition paper book that's still out there. As a business decision, it's risky at best.

But, we're proud of that book, and we want to make sure it stays useful. Creating the second edition seemed the best way to do that.

Regards

Dave

···

On May 2, 2006, at 1:02 PM, Peter C. Verhage wrote:

No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?

Yeah that would be nice. Never bought a book that was outdated within a year...

11

I just tried to apply the coupon from the first edition book to get the new
PDF and it does not work (unless I am doing something wrong.) This isn't
surprising, but it would be very nice as someone else has mentioned in this
thread. Is getting this to work a possibility?

Ciao,
--Tyler Prete

12

I own The Pragmatic Programmer, Programming Ruby, AWDWR #1, Rails
Recipes, and the Subversion book. I imagine I'm not alone in having
multiple PP books.

The PP guys can certainly choose to do whatever they want here, but
considering that a lot of their customers probably buy several books
from them, it would be nice to get some kind of discount on the
upgrade.

Also I want to point out that I'm not complaining about how they do
business at all - the beta books program is brilliant, and I
(obviously) love PP as authors and as a publisher enough to give them
my $$.

Pat

···

On 5/2/06, Patrick Hurley <phurley@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/2/06, Peter C. Verhage <peter@no-nonsense.org> wrote:
> Greg Donald wrote:
> > No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?
>
> Yeah that would be nice. Never bought a book that was outdated within a
> year...
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter
>

I understand that there is no reasonable expectation for a discount
against the dead tree edition. Additionally, I can see why you would
not necessarily want to provide free pdf upgrades. I want Dave to
continue developing the book and have no problem paying for the
privilege. Of course it may be good business to offer a discount on
the pdf for repeat combo purchasers :slight_smile:

pth

13

I will definitely buy the new edition. It would be nice to offer a
discount for those of us with the dead tree version 1 edition.

Charlie Bowman
www.recentrambles.com

···

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 03:48 +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:

On May 2, 2006, at 1:02 PM, Peter C. Verhage wrote:

>> No love for us first edition buyers, pre- April 1st ?
>
> Yeah that would be nice. Never bought a book that was outdated
> within a year...

Well, to be fair, it wasn't us that outdated it, but the changes to
Rails. We could have kept the first edition as it was.

The decision to create a second edition was an incredibly hard one:
it's a commitment to many, many months of effort to produce. During
that time, the availability of a second edition beta will be hurting
sales of the first edition paper book that's still out there. As a
business decision, it's risky at best.

But, we're proud of that book, and we want to make sure it stays
useful. Creating the second edition seemed the best way to do that.

Regards

Dave

14

Okay, this will probably get a lot of people upset, but I have to come
to the defense of Dave Thomas and the rest of the crew at PP. A month
ago, everyone was saying please come out with a 2nd Edition, I'll
gladly pay for it. Now that it's here, there's this outcry about
having to upgrade. Well noone has to upgrade. Your 1st edition still
has valuable information in it, and you can still run version 1.0 of
Rails if that is what you want. You can keep using the 1st version and
supplement it with a lot of the great blog postings from many on this
list.

$50 is a lot of money, but you can buy the PDF for $23.50. Writing a
book is a huge comittment, and contrary to popular belief, there's not
much money in it. The books that Pragmatic Programmers come out with
are top notch, they are extremely valuable, and quickly pay for
themselves in no time. If you like what Dave Thomas and friends are
doing and you want the updates, I think purchasing the book is an easy
decision. If you don't feel like there's value there, then use your
money elsewhere.

Michael

15

"Tyler Prete" <psyonic@gmail.com> writes:

I just tried to apply the coupon from the first edition book to get
the new PDF and it does not work (unless I am doing something
wrong.) This isn't surprising, but it would be very nice as someone
else has mentioned in this thread.

Yeah, that was me. In the back of the book it doesn't say anything
about edition differences, but if you follow the link it lists, you'll
find this:

Note that if a book has multiple editions, the combo pack gets the
PDF which matches the edition of the paper book (for example, a
first edition paper book will receive a first edition PDF)

Totally reasonable; it wouldn't have hurt for me to have looked into
it further before jumping to conclusions. Anyway, I'm glad they've
chosen to work on this updated edition so soon. I'm sure they're
breaking some kind of record for shortest interval between editions.

-Phil

16

I doubt that many people would get upset by this, and if they do, they
probably don't know of the tremendous contributions Dave Thomas has
given to the Ruby community. More succinctly, if you use Ruby and you
use English, you're not allowed to get upset at Dave Thomas. That's
all there is to it :wink:

My only decision is whether to buy just the pdf or the 2nd. Ed. combo pack.

Jeff

···

On 5/2/06, Michael Trier <mtrier@gmail.com> wrote:

Okay, this will probably get a lot of people upset, but I have to come
to the defense of Dave Thomas and the rest of the crew at PP. A month
ago, everyone was saying please come out with a 2nd Edition, I'll
gladly pay for it. Now that it's here, there's this outcry about
having to upgrade. Well noone has to upgrade. Your 1st edition still
has valuable information in it, and you can still run version 1.0 of
Rails if that is what you want. You can keep using the 1st version and
supplement it with a lot of the great blog postings from many on this
list.

$50 is a lot of money, but you can buy the PDF for $23.50. Writing a
book is a huge comittment, and contrary to popular belief, there's not
much money in it. The books that Pragmatic Programmers come out with
are top notch, they are extremely valuable, and quickly pay for
themselves in no time. If you like what Dave Thomas and friends are
doing and you want the updates, I think purchasing the book is an easy
decision. If you don't feel like there's value there, then use your
money elsewhere.

Michael

17

I completely agree with you Michael, and I hope my question didn't come off
as an "outcry." These books are definitely worth the money. The only
reason I asked is that people who previously bought the PDF with a coupon
from the first book are allowed to upgrade for free, so it would seem fair
that people who have not used their coupon yet could get the PDF for the
discounted price. And if the new book is as worthwhile as I'm sure it will
be, I will definitely buy the paper version once it comes out.

Ciao,
--Tyler Prete

···

On 5/2/06, Michael Trier <mtrier@gmail.com> wrote:

Okay, this will probably get a lot of people upset, but I have to come
to the defense of Dave Thomas and the rest of the crew at PP. A month
ago, everyone was saying please come out with a 2nd Edition, I'll
gladly pay for it. Now that it's here, there's this outcry about
having to upgrade. Well noone has to upgrade. Your 1st edition still
has valuable information in it, and you can still run version 1.0 of
Rails if that is what you want. You can keep using the 1st version and
supplement it with a lot of the great blog postings from many on this
list.

$50 is a lot of money, but you can buy the PDF for $23.50. Writing a
book is a huge comittment, and contrary to popular belief, there's not
much money in it. The books that Pragmatic Programmers come out with
are top notch, they are extremely valuable, and quickly pay for
themselves in no time. If you like what Dave Thomas and friends are
doing and you want the updates, I think purchasing the book is an easy
decision. If you don't feel like there's value there, then use your
money elsewhere.

Michael

18

I'm pretty sure there was no outcry.

I interpret most of the responses as, "It'd be sweet if we could get a
discount, but if not, hey, no prob."

Pat

···

On 5/2/06, Michael Trier <mtrier@gmail.com> wrote:

Okay, this will probably get a lot of people upset, but I have to come
to the defense of Dave Thomas and the rest of the crew at PP. A month
ago, everyone was saying please come out with a 2nd Edition, I'll
gladly pay for it. Now that it's here, there's this outcry about
having to upgrade. Well noone has to upgrade. Your 1st edition still
has valuable information in it, and you can still run version 1.0 of
Rails if that is what you want. You can keep using the 1st version and
supplement it with a lot of the great blog postings from many on this
list.

$50 is a lot of money, but you can buy the PDF for $23.50. Writing a
book is a huge comittment, and contrary to popular belief, there's not
much money in it. The books that Pragmatic Programmers come out with
are top notch, they are extremely valuable, and quickly pay for
themselves in no time. If you like what Dave Thomas and friends are
doing and you want the updates, I think purchasing the book is an easy
decision. If you don't feel like there's value there, then use your
money elsewhere.

Michael

19

Not everyone who'd used a coupon gets a free PDF: only those who'd bought a PDF between April 1st and now. It's a courtesy, a bit like Sears giving you a sale price if you happen to buy a couple of days early.

Dave

···

On May 2, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Tyler Prete wrote:

I completely agree with you Michael, and I hope my question didn't come off
as an "outcry." These books are definitely worth the money. The only
reason I asked is that people who previously bought the PDF with a coupon
from the first book are allowed to upgrade for free,

20

Dave,

Could you make another announcement when the book is available from Amazon.
I just looked for it so I could pre-order, but only the 1st edition is
listed.

I want to buy the book and I like to give Amazon my business.

Thanks,

David

···

On 5/2/06, Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

On May 2, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Tyler Prete wrote:

> I completely agree with you Michael, and I hope my question didn't
> come off
> as an "outcry." These books are definitely worth the money. The only
> reason I asked is that people who previously bought the PDF with a
> coupon
> from the first book are allowed to upgrade for free,

Not everyone who'd used a coupon gets a free PDF: only those who'd
bought a PDF between April 1st and now. It's a courtesy, a bit like
Sears giving you a sale price if you happen to buy a couple of days
early.

Dave

--
--------
David Pollak's Ruby Playground
http://dppruby.com