Considering writing a book on Ruby/Rails?

ruby-talk
1

If anyone here is considering writing a book on Ruby or Rails I'd like
to ask you to do one thing:

Please, please, please do not do us the disservice of putting a
chapter(or more) on how to install Ruby/Rails.

Every single book I've read has devoted at least a chapter to installing
it. Point the inexperienced reader to google or almost any other site on
Ruby and let them learn there, please. At $40+ per book, I expect
information that I will want to reference repeatedly instead of
information that I will only use once, EVER, since installing isn't
something you need help with doing on a day to day basis.

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

2

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

Such a book should then provide a warning label "Don't just skip straight to Chapter 4!"

···

--
  Phlip

3

Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails." It goes through all the
steps, with detailed commentary (which other books lack). I think
it'll be great for taking people from Ruby/Rails installation
journeymen to masters.

Pat

···

On 10/7/07, Eric H. <REMOVE-CAPSburnFORout@setmdaiiol.com> wrote:

If anyone here is considering writing a book on Ruby or Rails I'd like
to ask you to do one thing:

Please, please, please do not do us the disservice of putting a
chapter(or more) on how to install Ruby/Rails.

Every single book I've read has devoted at least a chapter to installing
it. Point the inexperienced reader to google or almost any other site on
Ruby and let them learn there, please. At $40+ per book, I expect
information that I will want to reference repeatedly instead of
information that I will only use once, EVER, since installing isn't
something you need help with doing on a day to day basis.

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

4

+1 here. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You'll have to wait
a few months to *not* read about how to install Rails, though:

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Rails-Brad-Ediger/dp/0596510322

Assuming we don't change the chapter order between now and then, the
first chapter will have you neck-deep in Ruby metaprogramming.

It really does hurt my page count not to include huge screenshots of
installing Ruby, Rubygems, and Rails on Linux, OS X, and Windows,
though. :wink:

Brad

···

On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 06:15:05AM +0900, Eric H. wrote:

If anyone here is considering writing a book on Ruby or Rails I'd like
to ask you to do one thing:

Please, please, please do not do us the disservice of putting a
chapter(or more) on how to install Ruby/Rails.

5

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

No way. It only seems that way. because most books cater to people who are fairly new to Ruby or Rails.
Advanced books are always a tougher sell for publishers.
Ultimately, this type of content is likely a publisher/editorial decision in most cases.
Publishers already pressure most Ruby books' authors to include something about Rails.
The one thing that can probably be left out is the "getting up and running with Rails" sections. Particularly in books that don't go any further than that with the Rails topic.
But marketing is part of the publishing industry, and lots of publishers want you to buy their book and they know that a book that looks like it might have everything in it (broad, not deep) will usually sell better than a more narrowly focused book that goes deeply into one subject.

The same argument would make you say, " no more chapters about how to use [insert method or class here] "
Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!

I suggest a GUI focused Ruby book that covers Qt, Tk, Wx, etc...
A game / graphics focused Ruby book... (could easily be integrated or connected with the GUI book)
A whole host of Ruby topics could be entire books based on one or two classes or modules or gems.
What we have enough of are books that are broad but not deep.
As an example: Pro ActiveRecord is a nice one, but an Expert ActiveRecord would be better...

Lots of topics to suggest.

6

Phlip wrote:

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

Such a book should then provide a warning label "Don't just skip
straight to Chapter 4!"

Sadly, you're probably spot on...but funny still.

7

Next you'll suggest that all the other books delete their installation
chapters and link to a page where people can buy your book... :slight_smile:

···

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:10:54 +0900, Pat Maddox wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails."

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

8

Pat Maddox wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails." It goes through all the
steps, with detailed commentary (which other books lack).

What's sad is that I can't tell if this is satire or not.

···

--
James Britt

"In Ruby, no one cares who your parents were, all they care
  about is if you know what you are talking about."
   - Logan Capaldo

9

Pat Maddox wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails." It goes through all the
steps, with detailed commentary (which other books lack). I think
it'll be great for taking people from Ruby/Rails installation
journeymen to masters.

Sadly, I'd rather buy your book if I needed it than to pay for the info
to be included in the other books where I do not. :wink:

10

Brad Ediger wrote:

···

On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 06:15:05AM +0900, Eric H. wrote:

If anyone here is considering writing a book on Ruby or Rails I'd like
to ask you to do one thing:

Please, please, please do not do us the disservice of putting a
chapter(or more) on how to install Ruby/Rails.

+1 here. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You'll have to wait
a few months to *not* read about how to install Rails, though:

Amazon.com

Assuming we don't change the chapter order between now and then, the
first chapter will have you neck-deep in Ruby metaprogramming.

It really does hurt my page count not to include huge screenshots of
installing Ruby, Rubygems, and Rails on Linux, OS X, and Windows,
though. :wink:

Yeah, and I'll likely buy the book just so I can support someone who
gets that if one is learning a programming language that they are
probably quite capable of compiling from source, not to mention capable
of simply installing from a *gasp* installer. I too put my money where
my mouth is.

11

John Joyce wrote:

I hate to gripe but as of today I'm at Ruby/Rails book number 7 and it
has the exact same info all over again on installing. Enough is enough.

No way. It only seems that way. because most books cater to people who
are fairly new to Ruby or Rails.
Advanced books are always a tougher sell for publishers.

Nope. It's book #7 and it's supposed to be a fairly advanced book.

The same argument would make you say, " no more chapters about how to
use [insert method or class here] "
Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!

Not true. My gripe is that an installation is something you do once and,
unless you've got absolutely no experience and/or the memory of a newt,
you never have to learn to do again since one install is going to be
extremely close to another even across different platforms.
Methods/classes *are* something that we refer to repeatedly, "just to be
sure we got it right"; that's why I made that distinction in my original
post.

12

John Joyce wrote:

Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!

I suggest a GUI focused Ruby book that covers Qt, Tk, Wx, etc...
A game / graphics focused Ruby book... (could easily be integrated or connected with the GUI book)
A whole host of Ruby topics could be entire books based on one or two classes or modules or gems.
What we have enough of are books that are broad but not deep.
As an example: Pro ActiveRecord is a nice one, but an Expert ActiveRecord would be better...

Lots of topics to suggest.

Agreed ... then again, there are some other good books that don't even exist:

"Up and Running with Nitro and Og"
"Up and Running with Iowa"
"Pragmatic RSpec" (although I hear that's due in beta by the end of the year)
"ZenTest and Heckle Primer"
"Selenium ..."
"Watir ..."
"Cerberus ..."

There are some things Ruby has -- like Rails, Nitro, Iowa, RSpec, ZenTest, Heckle and many others -- that don't exist in the Perl world. So you can't say, as you can with Ruby/Tk, "Go learn from the O'Reilly Perl/Tk book and just translate the syntax from Perl to Ruby and you'll be on the air".

I think the real problem is not that every book on Ruby tells you how to install it. The real problem is that there doesn't seem to be an actual paid market for much beyond books about Rails and core Ruby. The other good stuff, like the things I've listed above, just isn't getting seen.

Then again, as a potential author, I'm not going to spend any time writing about things I don't use. So don't look to me for a Nitro or Iowa book, or a book about everything you wanted to know about Ruby on Windows systems. :slight_smile:

13

Fantastic idea! And since they'll have to print new, updated
editions, I can get a cut of the royalties.

Pat

···

On 10/7/07, Jay Levitt <jay+news@jay.fm> wrote:

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:10:54 +0900, Pat Maddox wrote:

> Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
> entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails."

Next you'll suggest that all the other books delete their installation
chapters and link to a page where people can buy your book... :slight_smile:

14

Yes.

···

On 10/7/07, James Britt <james.britt@gmail.com> wrote:

Pat Maddox wrote:

>
> Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
> entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails." It goes through all the
> steps, with detailed commentary (which other books lack).

What's sad is that I can't tell if this is satire or not.

15

Jay Levitt wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I'm actually working on a book
entitled "How to Install Ruby and Rails."

Next you'll suggest that all the other books delete their installation
chapters and link to a page where people can buy your book... :slight_smile:

How about a chapter on how to *uninstall* Ruby and Rails? Here's how you do it on a Gentoo Linux system:

# emerge --unmerge ruby rails
# emerge -uvDN world
# emerge --depclean

If you have packages that depend on Ruby, the second line will re-install it. And the third line will delete any orphaned packages.

···

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:10:54 +0900, Pat Maddox wrote:

16

Sure. The problem is the use case of someone who's been wanted to play
with Rails all week. Finally has a long weekend, stops by Barnes & Noble
or CompUSA to find the appropriate books. They have a few, some are even
the latest version. He grabs them, takes them home, and starts reading:

"First, enter the console app, where you'll be able to execute ruby
statements with real-time feedabck. From console..."

and the reader goes "What? What conosle? What directory is it in?"

Than then parses out to one of two problems:

- OSX user with a built-in Ruby 1.8.2 install and library, and potentially
old versions of the gem updater that need manual intervention to start
pulling down 0.i gem;

- Ditto, but they've installed Locmotive at some point, which stores Ruby
and libs in yet another directory hierachy;

- Windows user now, using the OCI, puts his lib under his C:RUBY hierarchy

- Another one tries to put it under My Documents

- And the last one tries to get clever and start switching to cygwin so
they can use bash.

Yeah, there's a book in there.

Jay

···

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:33:21 -0400, Eric H. wrote:

Sadly, I'd rather buy your book if I needed it than to pay for the info
to be included in the other books where I do not. :wink:

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

17

Actually, as a first step in that direction a "common useful libraries"
book -- perhaps called "prospecting for gems", or something cleverer --
would be excellent. I don't mean a listing: I mean an honest-to-goodness
tutorial/primer on a bunch of great libraries/modules for common tasks.

···

On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 08:31:54AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

John Joyce wrote:
>Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!
>
>I suggest a GUI focused Ruby book that covers Qt, Tk, Wx, etc...
>A game / graphics focused Ruby book... (could easily be integrated or
>connected with the GUI book)
>A whole host of Ruby topics could be entire books based on one or two
>classes or modules or gems.
>What we have enough of are books that are broad but not deep.
>As an example: Pro ActiveRecord is a nice one, but an Expert
>ActiveRecord would be better...
>
>Lots of topics to suggest.

Agreed ... then again, there are some other good books that don't even
exist:

"Up and Running with Nitro and Og"
"Up and Running with Iowa"
"Pragmatic RSpec" (although I hear that's due in beta by the end of the
year)
"ZenTest and Heckle Primer"
"Selenium ..."
"Watir ..."
"Cerberus ..."

There are some things Ruby has -- like Rails, Nitro, Iowa, RSpec,
ZenTest, Heckle and many others -- that don't exist in the Perl world.
So you can't say, as you can with Ruby/Tk, "Go learn from the O'Reilly
Perl/Tk book and just translate the syntax from Perl to Ruby and you'll
be on the air".

I think the real problem is not that every book on Ruby tells you how to
install it. The real problem is that there doesn't seem to be an actual
paid market for much beyond books about Rails and core Ruby. The other
good stuff, like the things I've listed above, just isn't getting seen.

Then again, as a potential author, I'm not going to spend any time
writing about things I don't use. So don't look to me for a Nitro or
Iowa book, or a book about everything you wanted to know about Ruby on
Windows systems. :slight_smile:

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."

18

This is EXACTLY the scenario that supports boosting page counts with the continued detailed installation how-to's !
Why?
Though it means a few cents go to a few pages of stuff you may not think you need, it helps to ensure that we begin to develop some well documented and easy to access standard installations. That can definitely help reduce problems.
Besides, you may not think you need to install it again anytime soon, but what if your hard disk bites the big one? Hmmm?
Lightning storm, flood, you name it. No more installed Ruby. (unless you buy a new mac in a month)

Better scenario: imagine you are tasked with distribution/deployment of a Ruby app... support... it can be handier than you think...

but I digress, we have a wealth of rich stuff in Ruby that needs booking and Rubyists would definitely buy it.
Pdf is low cost. If a print publisher comes around and wants to make something more of it, then you're almost finished already!
So, rather than a Ruby codefest love in, lets get to writing about the libs you know best.
The language with the most docs&books wins! You aren't required to give it away. Many publishers are all about supporting ebook distribution on line, heck there's paypal and ruby for that, you can build it!

···

On Oct 7, 2007, at 11:10 PM, Jay Levitt wrote:

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:33:21 -0400, Eric H. wrote:

Sadly, I'd rather buy your book if I needed it than to pay for the info
to be included in the other books where I do not. :wink:

Sure. The problem is the use case of someone who's been wanted to play
with Rails all week. Finally has a long weekend, stops by Barnes & Noble
or CompUSA to find the appropriate books. They have a few, some are even
the latest version. He grabs them, takes them home, and starts reading:

"First, enter the console app, where you'll be able to execute ruby
statements with real-time feedabck. From console..."

and the reader goes "What? What conosle? What directory is it in?"

Than then parses out to one of two problems:

- OSX user with a built-in Ruby 1.8.2 install and library, and potentially
old versions of the gem updater that need manual intervention to start
pulling down 0.i gem;

- Ditto, but they've installed Locmotive at some point, which stores Ruby
and libs in yet another directory hierachy;

- Windows user now, using the OCI, puts his lib under his C:RUBY hierarchy

- Another one tries to put it under My Documents

- And the last one tries to get clever and start switching to cygwin so
they can use bash.

Yeah, there's a book in there.

Jay

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

19

Jay Levitt wrote:

Sadly, I'd rather buy your book if I needed it than to pay for the info
to be included in the other books where I do not. :wink:

Sure. The problem is the use case of someone who's been wanted to play
with Rails all week. Finally has a long weekend, stops by Barnes & Noble
or CompUSA to find the appropriate books. They have a few, some are even
the latest version. He grabs them, takes them home, and starts reading:

"First, enter the console app, where you'll be able to execute ruby
statements with real-time feedabck. From console..."

and the reader goes "What? What conosle? What directory is it in?"

Than then parses out to one of two problems:

- OSX user with a built-in Ruby 1.8.2 install and library, and potentially
old versions of the gem updater that need manual intervention to start
pulling down 0.i gem;

- Ditto, but they've installed Locmotive at some point, which stores Ruby
and libs in yet another directory hierachy;

- Windows user now, using the OCI, puts his lib under his C:RUBY hierarchy

- Another one tries to put it under My Documents

- And the last one tries to get clever and start switching to cygwin so
they can use bash.

cygwin ... slowly I turned ... step by step ... inch by inch ...

Yeah, there's a book in there.

# emerge -v rails

which installs all the dependencies including Ruby.

···

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:33:21 -0400, Eric H. wrote:

Jay

20

Far better suggestion is what topics to write books and chapters about!

I suggest a GUI focused Ruby book that covers Qt, Tk, Wx, etc...
A game / graphics focused Ruby book... (could easily be integrated or connected with the GUI book)
A whole host of Ruby topics could be entire books based on one or two classes or modules or gems.
What we have enough of are books that are broad but not deep.
As an example: Pro ActiveRecord is a nice one, but an Expert ActiveRecord would be better...

Lots of topics to suggest.

Agreed ... then again, there are some other good books that don't even exist:

"Up and Running with Nitro and Og"
"Up and Running with Iowa"
"Pragmatic RSpec" (although I hear that's due in beta by the end of the year)
"ZenTest and Heckle Primer"
"Selenium ..."
"Watir ..."
"Cerberus ..."

One problem with these though is that they change pretty fast don't they? So by the time you'd finish publishing it would it be out of date?

The only thing worse than a book on how to install Nitro/Og is a book on how to do it that is out of date and no longer applies :slight_smile:

Some of those smaller PDF booklets (mongrel has one, ferret has one, etc.) might be more realistic though and are at a price point that is low enough that it's not that big a deal if it's not accurate in 4 months cause by that point you'll be "following along" some other way.

-philip