I met Dave Thomas at a Ruby on Rails class. He really knows his stuff and I refer to his book at work.

Excellent introduction to Rails with Agile Development.

I needed a Rails refresh (without getting to deep - like in "The Rails Way") & that's precisely what I got.

Up-to-date (actually the most up-to-date book on the market on this topic at the moment of writing this review), very well structured, edited & presented - PragProg NEVER disappoints here. Their book can proudly hold the label "by developers for developers". Great code samples, clear description, fine pace - it really worked for me flawlessly. Maybe it's the case of knowing Rails earlier (but I've never written Rails or even Ruby for money), but I'd risk the statement that it would work exactly as well for any Rails starter.

Good stuff.

P.S. there's no Ruby intro (as a language), so make sure you handle language basics if you're a complete greenhorn here.
P.S.S. don't get distracted by the word "agile" - this is a tech book & there's no description what's Scrum, etc. :)

Perfect book for beginners. Everything you need to know to get started with Rails.

Loved it.

Like many other reviewers has said, this book is an absolute necessity for all the newbies who are learning ruby on rails for all sorts of reasons. I certainly like the way the book leads you to dig right into the coding something basic before educating you with all the little details afterwards.

I have only read seven chapters or so of this book, but I really like what I have read so far. This book isn't just about how to write applications in Rails, it is about the process of writing software.

Through having owned 3 editions, and basically having picked up all the material from other sources in the meantime anyway, after something like 7 years, I finally finished this book. I ... don't really have much more to say about it.

Rails is my 1st framework I've paid any attention to, and it looks like a lot of fun. It also looks like there are a lot of rules to follow. I'm sure I'll be able to break the rules once I figure a few things out with Rails, and maybe this book will get me there.

A very good step-by-step introduction to RoR. This book helps quite well to understand what RoR can and how to use it the right way to get most of value. Though, I missed content on scaling for bigger web apps.

This was the best book I found for Rails web development. If I had to choose between "Simply Rails" and this book, I would choose this book. The reason being that Simply Rails is a very gentle walk through of an example website, and that's about it. This book has that as the first section, and then continues on with more technical discussions of the major moving parts in the rails framework, and thus serves as both a primer and a reference.

The 4th edition is due to arrive soon, and is retooled for Rails 3. Anyone wanting to be on Rails 3 should get the 4th edition.

Really good introductory title for Ruby on Rails. First part on Ruby, second general approach to Rails, third, a bit more detail on the things you can do and how Rails works the way it does.

Don't expect too much if intermediate or advanced, though.