Just about any command I’m trying to do in this book seems rather broken.
I had to bootleg my way into install rubygems and all the other parts of the 1st second chapters as all the url’s were not working… now that I “think” it’s all installed, at least all the versions seem to be checking out… the entire “shovell” part is not working now… does nothing.
I had been rather pleased with sitepoint books up until now, but this one seems that it is a little broken.
Any thoughts? Any idea how to get the “shovell” section to actually work?
Should I just give up on the book? There another alternative to actually teaching me ruby/rails/etc?
One thing to remember is that Simply Rails was written to teach you how to use Rails 2.x.x and the current version is Rails 3.0.
Much of what you learn in the Simply Rails will be helpful but quite a bit has changed in Rails 3 and you will probably want something else to help you learn if you are unable to figure it out yourself.
If you want, you could always install Rails 2.x.x specifically and work through the book that way and then you could learn about the changes in Rails 3 afterwards.
Interesting thoughts… I finally got it working, I’m on ruby 3 ATM just doing what I can in the book. I am enjoying ruby compared to php honestly, although php is just so much more widely used.
There were points at which functions were depreciated and commands had changed, but there are alot of answers to all of those problems on these forums, and google.