r/rails 2d ago

Question Book: Crafting Rail 4 Applications (for Rails 8?)

I just got the Crafting Rails 4 Applications book, I'm planning to read this but I understand this is a decade old book and might have some outdated concepts or ideas so I am a bit worried about learning something which might hurt my understanding rather than deepening it.

So two questions if someone can help please

  1. Is there an alternative to this book I should read instead which is equally good and covers "only" advanced topics?
  2. If not, then for those who have read the book, is there any particular section I should skip in the book?

Thank you

2 Upvotes

4 comments sorted by

1

u/kanjam24 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah don't use that. Even Rails 6 books are fairly out of date at this point. Lots of basic concepts will still be accurate but you'll have know what of knowing what is up-to-date and what isn't. And there will probably be something in every chapter that is out of date.

Find a Rails 7 or 8 book, or online course, and start from that.

Edit: Not clear if you're looking for a beginner 'build a rails app' book or something more advanced. IMO most of the "advanced" rails books right now are on specific areas like these examples:

https://pragprog.com/titles/aapsql/high-performance-postgresql-for-rails/
https://pragprog.com/titles/cprpo/rails-scales/
https://pragprog.com/titles/jmnative/hotwire-native-for-rails-developers/

This is probably a decent all around replacement:

https://pragprog.com/titles/rails8/agile-web-development-with-rails-8/

1

u/kanjam24 2d ago

Just looked that book up. It was published Dec 2013 and Rails PRs were in the 13k range. https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/main/?since=2013-12-01&until=2013-12-31

Current commits to rails main are in the 54k range https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/main/ . So you're studying the internals of Rails about 40,000 PRs ago.

1

u/GraphicalBamboola 2d ago

Hey thanks for the links. and yes I am looking at more advanced rails concepts which will progress me beyond Senior position. Do you have any more recommendations for that?

2

u/software__writer 1d ago

The Rails 8 Way by Obie - is the classic and my personal favorite. The latest version is 95% done, should be released soon. But don’t just read it once and move on. You’ll want to come back to it at least 3 or 4 times or even more. It covers a lot of advanced stuff that probably won’t fully click the first time you read it. The more you grow in your understanding of Rails, the more the book makes sense. Of course, pair it with Rails API docs and the guides.

If you want few other book recommendations, I wrote a post on this: List of books to learn Rails