So I just intended to read the book Agile Web Development with Rails at Barnes and Noble last night where I often take my wife on dates after dinner. Except for Math (my major), Chemistry, Computer Science (when relational databases were still just a theory) and German, I read most of my books in college at the book store to avoid buying them. Mostly just before taking the tests. Hey, I was a poor college kid paying my own way through school. I still do that today with lots of books that I don't feel the need to own.

However, on page 3, right after "Dave's Top Ten Reasons to Like Rails" is section 1.1 Rails is Agile, where it says:

The title of the book is Agile Web Development with Rails. You may be surprised, then, to discover that we don't have explicit sections on applying agile practices X, Y and Z to Rails coding.

The reason is both simple and subtle. Agility is part of the fabric of Rails.

Let's look at the values expressed in the Agile Manifesto. They're stated as a set of four preferences. Agile development favors the following:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

I immediately closed the book, got up and went and purchased it. I think I'm going to love Rails (and I've already been learning Ruby and love it). Agile, which I confess I'm new to, is everything I believed when I had my own software business.

Funny thing is that I had just been talking to Coté, from Redmonk, that morning about agile, because he's such a big fan. Now I know why his domain is peopleoverprocess.com - it's #1 in the manifesto! :-)