"Hi Peter,
Cannot say enough good things about your book – it’s exactly what I was looking for – highly informative, and an incredibly enjoyable read to boot. THANK YOU!!
Having read through the book once I am now doing what I rarely do with any technical book that I buy (and that’s a LOT of books) – I am actually going back and working through the sample application..."
Steve Ovens
Principal Consultant
Vanguard Integration Pty. Ltd.
Melbourne
"Peter, thanks for a very useful honest and well written book. Exactly what I was looking for to combine Rails and Flex. ... It is very useful to see the organization of your code. ... GREAT JOB! THANKS!"
...this was followed by the following (I love that readers are using the code as the basis for their own projects):
"My Agile Issue tracker project based on your book might get useful in a month or so. If you are interested to include it as an example of a working code derived from your book I'll be more than happy. The project home is at http://code.google.com/p/tuskit/"
Dmitry Mozzherin Ph.D.
Senior Programmer Analyst
Medical Informatics Department
Stony Brook University
"Hi Peter,
I bought your book about a month or so ago. It has been a great help as has been the forum. My small firm has now become truly proficient at Rails and Flex2 RIAs. It has led to some good work. Most of all, though, we have been focusing a lot of our development on open source apps for non-profits. The efficiency of the Rails/Flex2 development pattern along with a well managed Agile approach have made for an incredibly productive team. Moreover, we are able to deliver some fabulous functionality to some amazing non-profit organizations that otherwise would not have had access to similar desktop proprietary software. All of this is to say thank you for your work. We and our non-profit clients have benefited immensely.
Peace"
-- Roberto A. Santiago, President, raSANTIAGO & Associates LLC
"As far as Flex on Rails, Peter Armstrong has got a really good book called Flexible Rails... That's a really good resource."
-- Tony Hillerson from effectiveUI, at the end of a podcast interview on The Flex Show.
"I've had an early look at the book, and its really well done. If you're doing any work on Flex and Ruby, I'd highly recommend getting a copy of it."
-- Mike Potter, Web / Open Source Evangelist, Developer Relations, Adobe
"For those of you who want a little more richness in your application interfaces, and AJAX just isn’t cutting it, Flexible Rails is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
Peter presents the material clearly, and does a great job of bringing the reader from zero to useful application skills quickly. This is a great introduction to a very interesting application of Rails."
--Steven Baker, creator of RSpec, the Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) framework for Ruby
"Flexible Rails is an excellent “beta book” on the use of Adobe Flex with Ruby on Rails, but I think the beta book handle is a bit of a misnomer, particularly for this book. The book itself is the “tip of the iceberg” for a collection of resources managed by the author, Peter Armstrong, around the subject. In addition to the pdf formatted book, with (typically monthly) updates, book purchase gets you access to the following:
- A Google code group with several hundred of the book’s readers, closely monitored by the author.
- A pretty nice application, “pomodo”, which is the subject grist for the book’s mill.
- Complete Web 2.0 style bug tracking for the book and pomodo errata.
The book is divided into over 20 iterations, wherein pomodo is variously built, refactored, debugged, sliced, diced and otherwise explored from every conceivable angle with respect to Ruby on Rails and Adobe Flex. The process of the book’s elaboration parallels the complete elaboration of pomodo itself, and sharpens the edge of the tutorial.
The Web 2.0 style participation in the evolution of the book and pomodo, provides huge value over and above the Flex and Rails tutorial itself. This participation is at least as enlightening, for those of us that would like to better understand and leverage the Web 2.0 participation-age tools and techniques, as it is in teaching the development of Rails and Flex applications. That is, if you don’t buy the book now, I think you miss out on a lot of valuable teaching that flows from the process.
I think the beta book designation is unfortunate and misleading. It needs a better name. The “book” presents a multi-dimensional, first-class, hands-on learning experience that is tough to quantify, but really easy to qualify: don’t miss it. "
--Lou Springer, Enterprise Architect at Sun Microsystems
"Looks like it could become the guide for those interested in the interoperability of Rails and Flex."
-- Peter Cooper, Ruby Inside
"This book is about using Macromedia’s Flex 2.0 and Ruby on Rails 1.1 together. The book presents the technologies as a tutorial. It gives a brief introduction and covers entire Web 2.0 application development: front end (Flex), web tiers (Rail), database and installation. It goes beyond typical tutorial books that you actually got a working and usable application at the end."
--Thomas Yip, The Big Grid
"Not only the book covers two of the most sought after new web technologies (its Web 2.0 coolness mark is absolutely incredible) but it is a treat to read and follow. Peter's approach is to guide us creating an application that is actually useful and complete, while educating the reader on all the foundations that make up a great Rich Internet Application both from the development/maintenance and end user perspectives.
This is light hearted book that while very professional is also filled with Web 2.0 humour (note: understanding of Web 2.0 isn't a requirement for reading the book!). This just makes the experience of reading a 300+ pages (in its current alpha form) that much more enjoyable."
-- Olivier Modica
"I wholeheartedly recommend checking this book out and buying it if you are at all interested in developing Web 2.0 applications."
-- Rich Breton, Digital Realism Personified
