Online Ruby Programming Course from Pragmatic Studio | Hacker News Reader

Online Ruby Programming Course from Pragmatic Studio

pragprog.com

60 pointsdjahng27 comments

There's quite a healthy ecosystem in this area now, it seems. Just some links:

https://rubyoffrails.com/ http://owningrails.com/ http://www.codeschool.com/ http://railstutors.com/ http://www.rubyreloaded.com/ (disclaimer: mine!) http://rubylearning.org/class/ (free) http://www.buildingwebapps.com/learningrails (free)

Probably should get together a list of these someplace actually!

are there comparable options for python? from my searching, I havent seen any as thorough as some of these.

O'Reilly has a certificate course. It is pretty good. I am almost done with the first section.

Wesley Chun has some videos out as well. Look on Amazon for those.

http://www.udemy.com/learn-python-the-hard-way/

Speaking of Ruby Reloaded, when is the next class? I'm thinking you're not going to make April at this point. :) Out of all of them, I think yours would be considered the only advanced one right?

My work on O'Reilly Fluent has severely hit my time for working on it and I like to 'rebuild' the course most times I run it. I won't make an announcement until I'm 100% happy for it to go ahead as I don't want to disappoint anyone but it should be "very soon"! :-)

Mine is probably the one most focused on intermediate developers rather than beginners per se. It's for people who already know and work with Ruby but who want to flesh out their understanding of the Ruby object model, metaprogramming, project structure, library building, and so forth.

Instructor at RailsTutors here. We just launched our next class, and I should point out that ours is live instruction and a month-long class-based curriculum. It's a HUGE difference from watching online videos. I don't want to market too much in this thread, but if you're interested just check out our curriculum and see what our previous students are saying: railstutors.com

I took the Rails Tutors class in February. I can say that Chris and Kevin have structured the course very well. I am also currently around 70% through this Pragmatic Programmers course... another great investment. I'm making a career switch from advertising sales and the education I am receiving from the vast resources online is amazing. I would say for any newbie, learn the Ruby basics from Pragmatic Programmers first.

Yes, Chris and Kevin did the course very well, I even met Chris once. Couldn't follow up after the course, but I enjoyed the course thoroughly. It was very affordable (was lucky to get into the first batch).

Thanks guys! We've improved the course a lot based on all the students' feedback. Very glad you enjoyed it, and drop me a line when you ship your project. We'd like to start featuring an "alumni showcase" of projects our students have built.

i'm doing a thing at http://bloc.io too, similar to RailsTutors

I'm currently in the market for a class of this nature. If the bloc offering is similar to RailsTutors, why does it cost more than 6.5x as much ($3,000 vs. $450)?

Based on the class descriptions, it looks like bloc.io lasts approximately twice as long (8 weeks vs. ~4). However, the first three weeks will be spent covering Michael Hartl's rails tutorial.

I don't mean to be flip, but I am having a hard time determining what the value proposition is here. Hartl's tutorial, after all, is more than clear enough to work through on an independent basis. Shouldn't it be a course pre-requisite, and not part of the core material - especially at these rates?

edited: clarity / details

Hi Doktrin, I'm also one of the guys tutoring at Bloc.

We don't make any assumptions about your skill level. We'll take any motivated person, and come up with a plan that will challenge them. Whether or not that includes Hartl tutorial is actually up to the individual mentor teaching the cohort.

We put a ton of time into each cohort. It is basically our full time job to make sure each and every person gets as much as possible out of the course. We typically have somewhere like 15+ of office hours a week. For most of the course, we basically coach you as you build real projects of your choosing.

Thanks for elaborating on your program, Hani. 15 weekly office hours is a great resource. I'm also glad to hear that your program can be tailored to the needs of the students. I'll doubtlessly have some more granular follow up questions, but will address them over email (if you prefer).

What is the start date for the next class?

Also, http://rubymonk.com (disclaimer: by my firm).

Currently has free courses with new, paid content coming shortly. $5 per month, all you can eat for access to the paid courses (free courses remain free). Course creators get royalties (and keep copyright, of course).

Another fantastic resource is the railscast series (railscasts.com) by Ryan Bates. Each one is short, pithy, and focused at about seven minutes. Whenever I watch one of them, in addition to learning what the particular episode is about, I invariably pick up a cute new rails or ruby idiom. It is like watching over the shoulder of a guru as he writes code.

I don't see how this can even compete with something like treehouse or code school. It's the same sort of online course that is being offered everywhere across the web and the price, in my opinion, is pretty outlandish.

As good as Code School is (I'm not familiar with Treehouse), its Try Ruby lessons are relatively shallow. A good introduction, sure, but I think this Prag course goes somewhat further.

I dove into programming in November as a complete newbie. I use every resource under the sun... railscasts, http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book, Treehouse, Codecademy, RailsTutors, This course, among dozens of others. This course is very well structured and offers a deep understanding into the Ruby language that none of the other resources compares to. For me, I take a bit from everything. I am confident that the route I am taking would blow away any formal education for building web applications. So a $199 price tag is extremely reasonable. There are other FREE ways to learn as well. To each their own.

There's a bubble in teaching programming right now. Anyone with any kind of content is trying to cash in.

I am curious: in what ways is an online course of this sort preferable to reading a book (plus doing exercises)? Is the "live" help really that much of a factor in learning the material?

I personally dont think it is, at least if I consider the things I am good at and how I got there. I read books. I find that tutorials and online classes actually slow me down.

I think this can appeal to people used to a classroom setting. It can also appeal to people see it as a chance to commit to things, like to videos coming up each week.

I'm 65% through the Pragmatic course, and the answer is that it of course depends on your learning style.

Books are great, but I enjoy the lectures, combined with the follow up exercises. I intend to supplement with books and the amount of free material on the web, but I feel the quality so far is worth the price.

Unlike a book, the instructors check in on you to see how you're doing, and ask for honest feedback. And you get access to a mailing list where so far I've seen any question answered very quickly, and without some of the intimidation one can feel asking "noob" questions in other places.

Again, I don't think it is an "either/or" proposition. But I do feel like this combined with other resources is a good option.

They don't help with beginning programming topics because the primary thing beginners have to learn is reading and writing code. The videos mostly help beginners who have been convinced through "learning modality" marketing to fear reading and writing as a teaching technique. After that, if they aren't typing and reading they aren't learning to code.

Where videos help is with demonstrating visually dominant technique topics, like CSS layout, how to use Vim, how to change the path in Windows, how to run a debugger, etc.

How much does it cost?

$199

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