Ruby on Rails turned web development upside down. By abstracting the core of web programming in an unparalleled way, this unique piece of technology changed the game forever. With Rails, you can write web applications quickly without compromising quality. You can be very productive, write little code, deal with almost no configuration, and adapt to changes in specifications with agility, all while keeping a well-organized and elegant code base.

With Ruby on Rails, you feel empowered. Want to explore something with a quick prototype? Delivered in no time. Need to develop a solid production-ready website? Presto!

A decade later, the fundamental principles underlying the Rails breakthrough still permeate and drive the design of the framework and the way Rails applications are developed. You’ll learn about these fundamental aspects of the Rails culture explicitly in the second chapter of Rails Crash Course and implicitly by example throughout the book.

While the foundational ideas behind Ruby on Rails remain key, the framework has evolved. Ruby on Rails has been extended here, shrunk there, iterated, and refined. The world in which Rails applications live has also evolved. Rails Crash Course presents the most modern and idiomatic Ruby on Rails.

But first things first. Ruby on Rails is a web framework written in the Ruby programming language. Think about Rails as a huge Ruby library: A Rails application is written in Ruby and uses the classes and core support provided by Ruby on Rails. Therefore, you definitely have to know some Ruby in order to write Ruby on Rails applications! The first chapter of Rails Crash Course introduces Ruby in case you are not familiar with it. Ruby is a powerful programming language, but it is easy to learn, and with that quick introduction, you’ll know enough to begin. Later, more advanced Ruby is explained.

Once you know some Ruby, you’re going to learn Rails. All aspects of the framework are covered, including how to write models that get persisted easily in a database, how to validate data, how to handle web requests, how to serve HTML, and so on.

Rails Crash Course covers all sides of Ruby on Rails, but then it takes you beyond the basics. For example, you’ll learn some advanced Active Record, authentication, and how to write an application that provides a REST API, but you’ll also learn about testing, security, performance, debugging, and other practical concerns of writing real-world web applications.

Further, Rails Crash Course guides you step-by-step all the way through uploading your application to production platforms and seeing it run on the Internet. That’s an amazing experience. You’ll learn how to deploy to Heroku and how to deploy to a computer in the Amazon cloud. While the servers needed to run an application for learning are small and free, they are the real thing: You’ll upload to the exact same services big companies are deploying their applications to. Rails Crash Course is a superb introduction to Ruby on Rails, and by reading it, you’ll get a solid understanding of Ruby on Rails and its ecosystem in a broad sense.

Welcome, and enjoy!