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These sound like really awesome improvements - that installation and configuration cliff and the heavy use of RSpec were the two things that kept me from recomm

These sound like really awesome improvements - that installation and configuration cliff and the heavy use of RSpec were the two things that kept me from recommending the 2nd Edition to beginners. If you've got time, it'd be nice to see the installation and configuration chapter make it in as an appendix, since new programmers are going to want to set up their development environment at some point - it's just better to have it at the end of the book, when they've hopefully already gotten hooked.

mhartl 12y ago
Thanks for the suggestion and for the kind words. Instructions for setting up a local development environment are already effectively an appendix, because the Ruby on Rails Tutorial just defers to the excellent [InstallRails](http://installrails.com/ http://installrails.com/) service provided by One Month Rails.
- ambulancechaser 12y ago
  Hello. Thank you so much for the book and the pioneering model that you have published it with. All the best on the platform for distribution. Please don't take the advice to downplay rspec. I think in chapter 8 you update the User model. It was so incredibly nice that, having been a week or so since I was able to work on the project, I was confident that the introduced changes did not break any functionality of the app. It is very easy to not see the benefit of testing when learning, only to curse your luck when you look at code later. I have recently read a good article using your test suite as an example of how to improve tests. The author criticized the terse nature of your tests, with subject and nested describes. He felt that you write once and read often, so there is great benefit to making the tests verbose. It is, in effect, a contract that any User model must satisfy to be a valid user model. Going DRY and code golf on it only helps to frustrate the person looking to acclimate themselves to a project rather than saving a few minutes during test creation. Again all the best and thanks for the wonderful tutorial and interesting distribution network.
  - mhartl 12y ago
    Please don't take the advice to downplay rspec. I think you may be confusing RSpec with testing generally. The 3rd edition replaces RSpec with the default Rails testing framework (MiniTest), but it still develops a thorough test suite.

mhartl 12y ago

Thanks for the suggestion and for the kind words. Instructions for setting up a local development environment are already effectively an appendix, because the Ruby on Rails Tutorial just defers to the excellent [InstallRails](http://installrails.com/ http://installrails.com/) service provided by One Month Rails.

ambulancechaser 12y ago
Hello. Thank you so much for the book and the pioneering model that you have published it with. All the best on the platform for distribution. Please don't take the advice to downplay rspec. I think in chapter 8 you update the User model. It was so incredibly nice that, having been a week or so since I was able to work on the project, I was confident that the introduced changes did not break any functionality of the app. It is very easy to not see the benefit of testing when learning, only to curse your luck when you look at code later. I have recently read a good article using your test suite as an example of how to improve tests. The author criticized the terse nature of your tests, with subject and nested describes. He felt that you write once and read often, so there is great benefit to making the tests verbose. It is, in effect, a contract that any User model must satisfy to be a valid user model. Going DRY and code golf on it only helps to frustrate the person looking to acclimate themselves to a project rather than saving a few minutes during test creation. Again all the best and thanks for the wonderful tutorial and interesting distribution network.
- mhartl 12y ago
  Please don't take the advice to downplay rspec. I think you may be confusing RSpec with testing generally. The 3rd edition replaces RSpec with the default Rails testing framework (MiniTest), but it still develops a thorough test suite.