Rails Recipes
4:55 pm July 10th, 2007Anyone developing any kind of web app with Rails should definitely pick up a copy of Rails Recipes. Even for a relatively simple app, I consistently find myself saying “I wonder if that book has anything I can adapt to do this task” and then it has, not something I can adapt, but something that is exactly right for the task at hand.
It’s really a lot like Rails in general — once you’re working in it, it’s so obvious that of course not every developer should have to reinvent the wheel for every part of an application when nearly every web app has these same parts. I’m a little bothered, though, that it seems so innovative — duh, there should be a framework that makes it easy to develop the stuff that everyone is developing, and duh, just like I don’t have to figure out how to make bread by trial and error, I shouldn’t have to figure out how to code an AJAX preview by trial and error. I guess I need to get better at training myself to think DRYly, so this kind of process will seem as natural as it should.
