Recommendations

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Recommendations

Cati Vaucelle Boulanger, Ph.D.

Researcher at Microsoft

“Aurelius has wings in the head! He will do whatever it takes to make his dreams come true. Discovering 10 ideas a day worth a company, he is one of of a kind to only choose what matters. He wants effective change. One day he writes a book on Ruby on Rails to help a crowd design their own social network, the other day he works on environmental solutions, reshaping solar energy, to affect the long term lives of millions of persons. He is 100% reliable, intelligent, friendly and caring, so if you have the chance to work with Aurelius, make it happen!”

Ramin Naimi, Ph.D.

Mathematics Professor, Occidental College

“When I want to do something, I put it on my to-do list. When Aure wants to do something, he just does it. He doesn't look at obstacles, but looks past them. (Or maybe over them, since he's so tall?) He's the most versatile person I know. When he has a new project in mind, even if it's something he knows little about, he just learns about it and figures out how to make it happen. But that's not why he's one of my best friends. I like him because he's smart, frank yet non-judgemental, and always has new and funny stories to tell you. You should try to meet him if you don't know him already; you'll wish you had met him sooner. I did.”

Ann Parker

Technical Writer, Cool Earth Solar

“As a contract writer/editor for Cool Earth Solar, I had the pleasure of working with Aure on a number of projects, including editing a patent for a very intriguing meteorological station that he developed and a funding proposal for the self-same met station that received $95,000 from the California Energy Commission. Aure is enthusiastic, energetic, intelligent, and creative, and I could add another dozen more glowing adjectival qualities without blinking... He's a true Renaissance kind of guy. He encourages those he works with to push themselves to the same levels of excellence as he pushes himself. What's more, Aure is *fun* to work with!”

Michael Hartl, Ph.D.

RailsSpace Co-author

“Having Aurelius Prochazka as a coauthor made RailsSpace possible---and not only because he recruited me to the project in the first place! In addition to keeping the prose crisp and honest, he wrote the initial implementation of the application code, handled all the figures, and served as quality control to make sure the book did what we said it did. As an Amazon reviewer noted, "One of the many things that made this book a pleasure to study is the code just works as is." He has Aure to thank for that.”

Philip Greenspun, Ph.D.

Co-Founder and CEO, ArsDigita Corporation

“Aure is one of those rare people who can (1) conceive of an interesting service idea, (2) design an elegant and simple user interface to the service, (3) design an attractive yet spare graphic layout for the pages, (4) develop a relational database data model, (5) code the page scripts that connect the Web server to the database management system. I.e., Aure functions like a 10-person team!”

Paul Giordano

VP Professional Services Sales, ArsDigita Corporation

“One of the smartest people I've ever met. I could always rely on him for frank feedback, accurate technical assessments and reliable execution on our projects. Hired great people too. He rolled up his sleeves and did the tough work himself when needed.”

Gail Anderson

Director, Electronic Media Publications, Caltech

“Aurelius is a confluence of amazing talents--incredible technical skill, empathy, design sense and communications ability. He always augments the quality of any project that he's associated with, always arrives at solutions to hard problems sooner than anyone else. Aure seems to work best by building on his considerable and varied experiences to extend the horizons of his comfort zone ever outward. He's always curious, always learning, always open to new ideas and new means of communication. Speaking as a project manager, it's a rare privilege to work with a developer of such high caliber who also has the capacity to appreciate and embrace the needs of all constituents--be they clients, end users, programmers, designers, writers. Speaking as a creative director, I can add that Aure extends the thinking on any project to higher levels. Speaking as a collaborator, Aure brings a sense of calmness, earnestness and gentle humor to even the most complicated and deadline-driven projects. Working with Aure is a sheer pleasure. I recommend him without reservation.”

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Amazon Reviews

Invaluable resource for hands-on learning of Ruby on Rails
By Nate Klaiber (nkbookreviews.com)
RailsSpace does an excellent job of teaching Ruby on Rails through a hands-on, real world application. If you are like me then you probably cringed at the thought of yet another social networking site. However, after reading through the first part to this book my apprehensions were put at ease. The authors explained in the opening chapter that "There's a tension in any educational book between the two extremes of pure tutorial and pure reference. We land firmly on the tutorial side of this spectrum--" The audience for the book is anyone beginning with Ruby on Rails. This book assumes no prior knowledge of Rails or Ruby, and sticks to that through the entire book. Each chapter walks you through the process of creating RailsSpace, while also teaching you best practices and some of the nuances of Ruby and the Rails framework.

Great introduction to Rails
By Stefan Uelpenich (Austin, TX United States)
I purchased this book after reading through some other Ruby and Ruby on Rails books and I find that RailsSpace provides an excellent introduction to Ruby, Ruby on Rails and the concepts behind social networking sites. What I find particularly great about this book is that the authors precisely anticipate the questions the reader might have, then ask those questions themselves and answer them. This makes the book interactive, easy and fun to ready and provide a great pace for learning. From a style and tutoring perspective, this is one of the best technical guidebooks I've seen so far.

Great Intro to Ruby on Rails
By Patrick Tulskie
If you're thinking about getting this then stop now and just do it. It's a great introduction to RoR that is fun and practical. Simply put, you construct a really simple social network with the book. I'm only half finished with it, but the stuff I've learned will be invaluable on other projects. The author sprinkles in some humor the whole way along. One of the really great things is the testing and refactoring of code. They show you how to do something quickly and then they also take the time to go back and clean up code and do things more efficiently, while maintaining integrity through RoR's testing. It's awesome, and I've already purchased another copy to give away as a gift.

My favorite of the Ten Ruby and Rails Books on my desk.
By Charles Harvey (Arlington, Va United States)
For this beginner/intermediate programmer struggling to become a Ruby and Rails expert, RailsSpace strikes a perfect chord. I have been working through the Safari version of the book until receiving my hard copy yesterday. I would highly recommend this as the first book on learning RoR after a pure Ruby book such as Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition"(known in the community as the Pick Axe) or Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)" two excellent books on Ruby which I found out the hard way is best learned before tackling Rails.

One of the many things that make this book a pleasure to study is the code just works as is. For those of you who have suffered through many Rails books that in the rush to publish have you constantly referring back to 5, 6, or more of errata, it is such a nice surprise to enter code and it just works. I am currently running Ruby 1.8.6 and 1.2.3 the current versions and have had to refer to only one example of errata in the first half of the book.(p.24 gemserver should be gem_server). Kudos to the technical editor for a "getting it correct." The authors' programming style(s) are easy to read while following and teaching the Ruby/Rails community practices. The book uses output examples after each snippet of code so you can follow along not wondering if what you just did worked.

Pretty Good
By Lee (CA, United States)
This book is a must have for a beginner Ruby on Rails programmer. It covers all of the basics of building a social networking website in depth. Specifically Railspace goes over: registration, login, user relationships (friends - this is quite complicated for the beginner), search, image uploads, and more... While you could technically use Google and the many Rails forums to find the answers found in this book, using this book is both a time saver and headache preventer (if it were around when I started development on my website).

Great Reading
By A. Kast (New York, NY)
I love this book because it is highly readable and full of little asides explaining why things work the way they do. Rails has many features, and ruby the language has many more, so I love the way this book explains both at the same time, yet without being "too simple". The book assumes that you are intelligent but simply ignorant of rails and the nuances of ruby, so it feels like a good colleague explaining the finer quirks of a system.