Michael Hartl announces the Rails Tutorial Vanguard

I really loved the tutorials, learned a lot. However, I'm not rich enough to pay $495 :( Maybe if it was a little less I would pay for it. Yeah I know he has to pay his bills, but so do I. :(

I really doubt Michael will make a "large amount of money" for the amount of time he has put in, even at $495 a pop, though I hope I'm wrong. I suspect the real value comes later when he raises his consulting rates.

The strategy you outline seems to have a bad reputation in Hacker News circles, though I'm not sure why; as long as the product in Step 1 is valuable by itself, the strategy certainly isn't a bait-and-switch. In any case, that's not what the Rails Tutorial Vanguard is about. I'm trying to keep the Vanguard small (say 5–10 people), and several slots have already been filled at an earlier price, so the Vanguard is not designed primarily as a money-making operation. (I've spent the equivalent of six months full-time on the book, so even a $5000 return would be a pittance compared to the opportunity cost.) Instead, the relatively high price is a way of attracting Vanguard members who place a high value on small-group and individual mentoring. People who don't find such attention valuable should wait for the release of the (much cheaper) screencast series itself.

From what I've seen most of the basic knowledge involved in creating a Rails 2.X app translates well for Rails 3. The basic application structure and the way of thinking about the layout of the application remains largely unchanged.

Some highlight differences difference being:

  # ActiveRecord query syntax
  2.X: User.all(:conditions => {:name => "aaron"}, :limit => 1)
  3.X: User.where(:name => "aaron").limit(1)
  
  # ActionMailer API now closely matches the ActionController API
  2.X: 
    class Notifier
      def user_notification(user)
        recipients  user.email
        subject     "test subject"
        from        "system@test.com"
        body        :user => user
      end
    end
    
  3.X:
    class Notifier
      default :from => "system@test.com"
      
      def user_notification(user)
        @user = user
      end
    end   
    

In Rails 3 Gem dependencies are managed using Bundler, which means that you have to explicitly declare all of the gems your application uses, even fundamental things like Rails and Rack. Calls to config.gem need to be removed, and added to a Gemfile instead.

There are quite a few more API changes than what I have listed here, routes in particular will change greatly for complex applications. The full details are here: http://guides.rails.info/3_0_release_notes.html

Also: I would keep going with the tutorial. It's always good to have the experience of transitioning between versions, and you probably won't appreciate Rails 3 as much if you haven't used 2.X! :-p

I'm going along with the tutorial myself, except I'm actually doing it in Rails 3 and researching the differences on my own as they crop up.

So far, the tutorial actually seems fairly accurate. Differences so far: the tutorial has you use RSpec 1 for testing, but RSpec 2 (prerelease) is required for Rails 3. Also, routing is completely different in Rails 3, which shows up early on (when you create a new static page without autogenerating it) and then later in the routing section. Then there's the minor matter of using "rails generate" and "rails server" instead of "script/server" and "script/generate".

I'd say not very much. I've been through the tutorial in both 2.3.5 and 3.0.0.beta and think the improvements in the latter justify developing in it. Probably a much more useful question to ask yourself is whether or not the plugins you'll need for your application have been tested, and work in Rails 3.

Most of your Rails 2.3 knowledge will still be good, but I would suggest developing your new app using Rails 3 if possible. I'll be working on the Rails 3 version of the tutorial over the next few weeks; keep your eyes peeled for an announcement when it's ready.

I think Michael offers a 60-day no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee, though you should verify that first.

$495 isn't for the screencasts; the Vanguard is a de facto training course, and those usually run $500 per person per day. Every Vanguard member will get lots of individual mentoring and attention; people who don't find that valuable shouldn't sign up. (N.B. Ryan Bates doesn't provide one-on-one or small-group mentoring for Railscasts viewers.)

The Vanguard is a group to help make the screencasts; the screencast product itself will probably be over 10 hours and cost around $50, which I think is pretty cheap. And it will be designed to complement things like the Railscasts and PeepCode, which tend to cover intermediate and advanced topics; the Rails Tutorial screencasts are designed for beginners who aren't yet ready for that material.