Mark Watson wrote:
> I would appreciate some help defining the topics for a new free web
> book(*) that I am planning on writing. The tentative table of contents
> (which will change - especially if you make good suggestions :-) is:
> 
> Enterprise Ruby

What, exactly, does "Enterprise" mean here?


> 
> There are many great books on using Ruby in enterprise settings and
> what I am trying to do here is filling in more information on topics
> that are not covered elsewhere to any great extent. This is why I am
> only planning one long chapter on using Ruby on Rails. A lot of Section
> II will be implemented on the Rails platform, but I am assuming that
> any reader has already worked through a few Ruby on Rails tutorials and
> is likely to have already implemented a few web applications using RoR.

You may be doing readers a disservice by presuming RoR is always the 
proper choice for Web/database applications.  My take from those who 
discuss Rails and "enterprise" is that it is not always a good fit for 
legacy databases, distributed data stores, message queues, and assorted 
stuff that seems to get tagged "enterprise".  (Mind you, I find the term 
"enterprise" to be context-dependent and hence largely content-free, and 
opinions I've read regarding this may be based on assorted prejudices in 
favor of Java and against anything not Java.)

So, an exploration of Ruby Web tools may be just the thing that is not 
sufficiently covered elsewhere (though it may distract from the main 
focus of your book).

> 
> I wrote a free web book "Loving Lisp, or the Savvy Programmer's Secret
> Weapon" a few years ago and I received a lot of great ideas, feedback,
> error corrections, etc. from the Common Lisp community. I am not known
> in the Ruby programming community so I might not get the same level of
> help, but I am hopeful :-)

I believe that offering the book for free will go a long way in 
encouraging support from the community, and I commend and appreciate 
your time and effort.

Plus, you're a fellow Zonie.


James Britt (Scottsdale, AZ)

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