• Registered: 2012-03-05
  • Posts: 95

Topic: Learning Rails v2 or v3?

I'm new to this forum and to Rails. I've been looking through several articles and online tutorials over the past week trying to get a sense of Rails, and it's really got me hooked. I'd like to build a web application using Rails, because it seems like a natural fit for what I'm wanting to do. I'm currently using a web host on a shared server and they are hosting Rails v2.3.x. They can't update to Rails v.3.x due to cpanel/mongrel incompatibility issues with Rails v.3 (as I understand it). So I'm thinking about buying an old edition of the Agile Web Development book (Edition 3) that covers Rails v2 and working my way through that. But I'm wondering if I would be better off going ahead and learning from a more recent resource. How different is the current version of Rails from Rails 2.3.x?  If I study Rails 2, will it be much to get up to speed on Rails 3 in 6-8 months when (hopefully) my web host can move to Rails 3?

Last edited by Brian71 (2012-03-08 15:34:32)

  • From: Columbus, Ohio
  • Registered: 2011-01-30
  • Posts: 49

Re: Learning Rails v2 or v3?

If I were you I would just use Heroku for hosting and learn rails 3. Heroku offers free hosting for tiny apps and you can scale as you go.

The big differences between rails 2 and 3 is active record and routing. Rails 3 does offer the asset pipeline by default which is kinda nice.

If you do learn rails 2 first most of the code still works in rails 3 so that's a plus.

lscott3's Website

  • Registered: 2012-03-05
  • Posts: 95

Re: Learning Rails v2 or v3?

lscott3 wrote:

If you do learn rails 2 first most of the code still works in rails 3 so that's a plus.

This is good to know.

I'll check out Heroku as well, thanks for your advice.