Hacker News Reader

Really like Michael's clear writing style (remember reading Railsspace back in 07). Thx for this new resource.

Also like the fact that he doesn't use many gems, but discusses building stuff from scratch (regarding Railsspace book).

View on HN

Thanks! Ruby on Rails Tutorial follows the same basic philosophy as RailsSpace, including its treatment of gems. See, e.g., my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=986514.

e.g. I fondly recall the use of the 'Haversine formula' (calc. distance on a sphere with given lat, lng) built in SQL, instead of using one of the available Geo ruby libraries/ gems (although I'm not sure, if those gems were available back in 07).

Dude, I would totally use a library today! But it was fun busting out a little spherical trigonometry for a Rails book. :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com