intertwingly

It’s just data

Agile Web Development with... Rack


I believe that test-first and continuous-deployment are important characteristics of Agile Web Development.  That’s why it bothers me that Testing isn’t properly introduced until page 205 of AWDwR3, and deployment until page 651.  I am also aware that not everybody who comes to this book has the same background and experience.

I’m experimenting with a number of ways to address this, and this is my current iteration.  The basic idea is a section that goes immediately after the Instant Gratification chapter (or replaces it) which can be skimmed or skipped by people who simply want to get on with learning Rails.  The section is heavy on testing, git, and Capistrano, and touches lightly on ActiveRecord and Rack and Whenever, the latter because I wanted to do something useful and demonstrate deployment without introducing something that wouldn’t be relevant once we get to the point where we are talking about Rails.

A secondary consideration is that I feel it is important to provide a contrasting alternative so that people can see the tangible benefits that Rails provides.  I touch on some of these points in the overview to the Rails section.  In particular, sections on raw sqlite3 insert and update could be dropped.  For the moment, they are there as they also provide additional motivation for migration.

A third consideration is that I prefer a scenario that naturally flows into the subsequent chapters where the Depot application is introduced.

A byproduct of my script is that it produces a git repository that one can pull.  Over time, I can add tags so that people can advance to specific points in the scenario and examine the code at that point.

Feedback welcome.