Part I: pp. 3 - 116 (first six chapters)
does PP kind of throw you into the deep end?
That’s not it at all. It’s easy enough to simply follow along in PP without much trouble … however that doesn’t mean you will necessarily be left with a sense of what to do in your own application when the time comes.
Understandably PP would defer to Ecto’s documentation for further in depth study (and possibly What’s New in Ecto) after some introduction in 4. Ecto and Changesets (pp. 51-70) and 7. Ecto Queries and Constraints (pp. 118-142).
Having PE Part I under your belt (in particular 4. Making Changes With Changesets (pp. 61-84)) those chapters would be largely review and you would likely have a much better sense of what is going on.
On a personal note, I just prefer having some focused time with a particular technology. By necessity in PP you are constantly context switching between Plug & Router, Controllers & Views, EEx templates and Ecto. Having Ecto already more or less settled quiets things down a bit.
would be good if the book details how to use Ecto as per PragDave’s thoughts
That chapter, in detail, deals with the type of application setup already seen in the Getting Started Guide while elaborating on other aspects like how to set up multiple Repos. So “without Phoenix” relates more to the fact that one is doing work manually that otherwise a Phoenix generator would tend to do.
