This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd Ed) Feed Title: Loud Thinking Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by David Heinemeier Hansson Latest Posts From Loud Thinking

More than 40,000 copies of the Agile Web Development with Rails book has been sold. That makes it one of the best selling computer programming books in its period, which would probably make the conventional wisdom "don't screw with the cash cow". But how much fun would that be?

Thus, today we're announcing the 2nd edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. It's more or less a complete rewrite that'll include the latest approaches and best practices developed in the Rails community over the past year. From RJS, to join models, to migrations, to RESTful interfaces, to Capistrano will be covered in the new edition following the same structure of building something real in an agile setting.

It's not done yet, though. Dave Thomas has been steering the ship since December and has so far navigated about half of the course. But what's there is already valuable enough to be worth seeding. So starting today, the beta version of the book is available for instant PDF download and for combo purchase (get the paper book when done).

Now should you get this book if you already own the first edition? Depends. If you're the kind of person who are already keeping up to date with the change logs through RSS, is constantly riding edge, and has a good number of applications under your belt, you might well not need it.

But with the more than 500 changes launched in Rails 1.1 alone, I can almost guarantee you that you missed something. Even members of the core team are routinely pleasantly surprised learning about new nuggets they didn't catch on commit.

What's even cooler about this beta book is that it'll ship as one package. The new chapters are clearly marked and distinct from the old ones. So you get a complete book with half the content being the rewritten stuff and half the content filling in from the old edition. And as the rewriting goes on, new versions will be available for download with more of the new stuff and less of the old.

BTW, checkout the cover. We're cycling through the metaphors. Now we've done trains and tracks, skating and bars, so you just know that the 3rd edition will be feature white lines of powder on a mirror. Right, Dave?