With all the fun and excitement around 3D printing, I've let my Ruby on Rails education lapse. I want to dive back in, but it's been long enough that I felt I needed a review. Also, during my time away, the Ruby on Rails team released version 5, and Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial was updated accordingly.

Independent of the Rails 5 updates, it was well worth my time to go through the book again. On second run, I understood some things that didn't make sense before. It was also good to look at the first do-nothing "hello app" and the second automated-scaffold "toy app" with a little more Rails knowledge under my belt. The book is structured so the beginner reader didn't have to understand the mechanics of the hello or toy apps, but readers with a bit of understanding will get something out of it.

The release notes for the update mentioned that a few sections were rearranged for better pacing and structure, and added more exercises for readers to check their progress. Both are incremental improvements that I appreciated but neither were especially earth-shattering.

Action Cable, one of the big signature feature of Rails 5, was not rolled into the book. Hartl is handling that in a separate tutorial Learn Enough Action Cable to be Dangerous which I will go through at some point in the near future.

Towards the end of the book, Hartl introduced an optional advanced concept: using Amazon Web Services to store user image uploads. I skipped that section the first time through, and decided to dive into it this time.

I quickly found myself in a deep rabbit hole. Amazon Web Services has many moving parts designed for a wide range of audiences and it's a challenge to get started without being overwhelmed.

Which is where I am now. Lots more exploration ahead!