[sshconnection]

I'd figure that it's more due to differing opinions on things like Test::Unit vs Rspec, Haml vs Erb etc than your publisher. Still, not a good excuse to go unrecognized. RW3 was excellent, and I'm sure 4 is as well. Best of luck.

[stiff]

"The Rails 3 Way" certainly wasn't excellent, it was clearly a rushed update of the original "The Rails Way", it uses a lot of old practices all over the place and the stuff new in Rails 3 is just added as an afterthought.

[obiefernandez]

Author here. It took nearly two years to get that rewrite done. A lot of things changed in Rails 3 right at the end of our production cycle so admittedly it was a challenge to get it all to the finish line in the best possible way. That won't be the case with the new edition. I have a stellar team helping me get this done properly and we're using the excellent Leanpub system to release the book incrementally and ensure the finished product is of the highest quality. Much different situation.

[subpixel]

Just ordered tr4w - at leanpub it says "These authors use Leanpub to publish this book independently." I'm just curious whether that's accurate, since you refer to Addison-Wesley as "us"? Thanks

[obiefernandez]

I have a special arrangement with AW to publish independently via leanpub. Book will also be on sale via traditional retail channels once the hardcopy is ready later this year. We view it as separate channels. Traditional retail hits a different customer segment, especially when you start taking into account corporate subscribers to Safari and companies that do bulk purchases, etc.

[subpixel]

Thanks for clarifying!

[kfaustino]

Co-Author here: I'm part of the team that is helping write The Rails 4 Way. Just to address your concerns, we have gone through the existing manuscript and removed everything that isn't best practice today. On top of that, we are covering all the new Rails 4 features, and important gems/techniques valuable to a Rails developer today. The second half of the book is going through a big revamp right now. Look for updates in the coming weeks.

[Vitaly]

Another co-author here. By now most people should probably already know that Rails has 2 default stacks: http://words.steveklabnik.com/rails-has-two-default-stacks

Since the Book is not 'the factory default stack of Rails' but rather the Rails "way" we certainly do have an opinion about what is considered the most popular and efficient way of building Rails apps. This does mean we use HAML throughout the book, because honestly, we all think its a better choice. Personally, since we converted to HAML at Astrails several years ago, I cringe every time I have to deal with ERB. Its just too verbose and it doesn't present the structure as obviously as HAML. Same for the rest of the 'opinions' in the book. YMMW

[sc00ter]

At one point Rails 4 was considering Test::Spec, and I for one was disappointed when that was dropped, as it was an opportunity to standardise on declarative style tests in a lightweight native library, and might have stood a chance of building enough momentum to build a groundswell of support.

As it is, while one can of course still use Test::Spec, you're likely to be in a small minority.

[wasd]

I'm not sure about that. Rails Tutorial uses Rspec extensively and gets some great recognition.