The Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial screencasts are out

by mhartl • 16 years ago

201 57 16 years ago

mhartl11• 16 years ago

The Rails Tutorial screencasts, together with the Rails Tutorial book, represent the culmination of nearly a year of effort. Hacker News readers can get a 10% discount on any combination of products at http://railstutorial.org/screencasts, including the recommended PDF/screencast bundle, using the coupon code

  hnscreencasts

Be sure to apply the code on the checkout page to get the discount. The code expires at the end of the month.

As always, the HTML version of the book is available for free at http://railstutorial.org/book. Now that both Rails 3 and RSpec 2 are in their final releases, I'm also gearing up for the planned Creative Commons licensing to encourage translation of the book. I already have volunteer translators for half a dozen languages; email me at the address in my HN profile if you'd like to be part of the translation effort.

kalid• 16 years ago

Congratulations Michael!

gaustin• 16 years ago

Awesome. Thanks for the discount!

locnguyen• 16 years ago

Congrats Michael! I've been using your tutorials as my primary learning resource for a few weeks now. It's the most succinct one out there and shows a newbie everything s/he needs to know to get up and running.

thibaut_barrere• 16 years ago

Congratulations and thanks for all your work!

greatgoof• 16 years ago

Congratulations! I just wanted to say how helpful the html version of your book has been for me! Thanks for that!

bis• 16 years ago

Grats with such hardwork. Your tutorial opened world of RoR for me.

Aqua_Geek• 16 years ago

Same here. I went from knowing nothing to being somewhat proficient in about two weeks thanks to your tutorials. Thanks a million for the excellent help!

happy4crazy• 16 years ago

The link to checkout a sample screencast doesn't seem to work--it just redirects me to a sample of the first chapter.

Otherwise, thanks for creating this! I've really enjoyed the book.

mhartl11• 16 years ago

Thanks! There was an exception being raised behind the scenes on the production server that didn't happen on the staging server. (Isn't that always how it goes?) Luckily, the site handled the situation (sort of) gracefully with a redirect, but clearly that is not acceptable behavior. In any case, it's fixed now.

By the way, this is why I always keep an eagle eye on the Hacker News comments on Launch Day. You guys rock!

wesbaker• 16 years ago

How do these compare to the PeepCode screencasts? I realize they're updated for Rails 3, but if you compared the Rails 2 screencasts to each other, how do they compare?

mhartl11• 16 years ago

If I recall correctly, PeepCode's Rails 2 screencasts are less than three hours total. That's fine if you're already an experienced Rails developer, but the Rails Tutorial screencasts are for people who want to learn Rails from scratch.

I recommend PeepCode (and Railscasts) as a follow-on to the Rails Tutorial. In fact, last year at GoGaRuCo I pitched the Rails Tutorial project to PeepCode founder Geoffrey Grosenbach as "From zero to PeepCode."

pchristensen• 16 years ago

I'm watching the sample screencast now, and I have bought Peepcode screencasts but not for rails, but here's my impression.

The railstutorial screencast reminds me of railscasts - almost 100% editor/terminal/browser. Very hands on, very code-intensive.

Peepcode has a lot of organized section transitions, slides, visual aids, etc. The summaries and concepts slides are exceptionally useful. Also, Jeffrey talks about half as fast as Michael in railstutorial.

Both are great and I'm talking myself into buying the railscast package right now. I wish I hadn't already spent ~$100 on educational stuff already this month :)

swombat2• 16 years ago

15 hours of Ruby tutorials? I hate to be a killjoy, but I recall there being a screencast that showed you (with, granted, a whole lot of magic pixie dust) how to build a blog in 15 minutes.

I'm not entirely sure that "More is good" in this context. But then, I know Rails already so I'm not part of your target market, I suppose.

Still, I would feel somewhat daunted by 15 hours of tutorials and 1000 pages of documentation. Sounds more like .NET than Rails.

ryanhuff• 16 years ago

There is a place for detailed coverage of the different topics. The 15 minute blog tutorial is great to give you a taste, but when you are new to a platform, its nice to have a more comprehensive resource that steps you through the details.

mhartl11• 16 years ago

You really need to watch "Lesson 2: A demo app". :-) It's my version of the "15-minute" blog, and even it is a lot more than 15 minutes because I go into considerably more detail. In the process, I enumerate all of the toy demo app's many failings, and then fill in the gaps in the subsequent 10 lessons. (If you don't want to buy the screencasts, taking a look at the free online book at http://railstutorial.org/book will give you a sense of what gets covered.)

The bottom line is that there's a world of difference between a tiny toy app and a real-world production app. The Rails Tutorial screencasts do teach you a toy app along the way (Lesson 2), but preparing you to make industrial-strength webapps is their raison d'être (Lessons 3–12). As it turns out, that takes more than 15 minutes. :-)

P.S. The "1000 pages" number included the page count of the Rails 2.3 Tutorial book, which many people won't need (though it's still useful for people with legacy apps). The Rails 3 Tutorial book itself is only about 500 pages, and I've change the wording on the site to make it sound less intimidating. Thanks!

mshafrir• 16 years ago

Note that this screencast offers a lot more than basic Rails. You get other concepts like basic Ruby, Git, and TDD.

r00k• 16 years ago

Amazing that people can complain that an open source tool is too well-documented.

The famous 'build a blog in 15 minutes' was Rails' elevator pitch: intriguing, representative, but by no means a complete picture. You still needed a full reference to get real work done. That's what this is.

swombat2• 16 years ago

There's plenty of Rails documentation, as well as for-money books and screencasts, already in existence. Generally, the successful ones tend to be tight and light. "Agile development with Rails", not "Extensive 1000-page guide to Rails". Worth also pointing out that I'm criticising the commercial effort here, not the general goal ("help people use Rails").

Also, as I mentioned, I'm not part of the target market, so my criticism may be off-base.

Bitmobrich• 16 years ago

If you want to be a rails developer it is going to take more than 15 minutes.

hello_moto2• 16 years ago

What wireframe tool do you use Michael?

mhartl11• 16 years ago

I used Mockingbird (http://gomockingbird.com/) supplemented with Adobe Fireworks for the images. Mockingbird was free when I wrote the book, but I think they might charge now. It's still probably a good deal, though.

hello_moto2• 16 years ago

Thanks! Still free (seems like)

MisterWebz• 16 years ago

So who's going to make the Django tutorial screencasts?

bcrescimanno• 16 years ago

Hi Michael (if you're still here in the comments),

As someone who has read your book (I actually did the first 8 chapters of the 2.3 version and then went back and did the whole thing for Rails 3--it's fantastic, by the way) I'm wondering how much additional value these screencasts really bring to the table (at least, from your perspective). I can definitely see it for someone about to go through the book for the first time, but it feels like there would be a ton of repetition for someone who has already been through it.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

mhartl11• 16 years ago

That's a great question. Based on the feedback from some early beta screencast reviewers who had also read the book, I think you'll find the screencasts to be a valuable complement. To find out for sure, I recommend downloading the full sample screencast here:

http://railstutorial.org/samples?file=rails_tutorial_lesson_...

If you find yourself learning something new compared to just reading Chapter 8, then you can be confident that (for you) the screencasts will add value over the book alone.

boundlessdreamz• 16 years ago

I'm not in the target market. I don't like screencasts at all. And don't see many advantages of pdf over html for the ebook. I like html better. But your book is awesome and I would like to contribute something back. A paypal donate button on the book page perhaps ?

mhartl11• 16 years ago

Well, I'm hoping to launch an affiliate program at some point. That way you can do well by doing good. :-)

johnohara• 16 years ago

First of all, congratulations Michael. I'm guessing there is more than a year of effort involved. The video is clean and sharp. Good audio too. Well done.

I notice you used a 4:3 aspect ratio (960x720) and was wondering why not 16:9. There are screencast benefits to both so I'm curious.

mhartl11• 16 years ago

The screencasts are also being published through Safari Books Online (via Addison-Wesley) later this year. (I'll include a link on the Rails Tutorial site once they're out.) The 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen mainly to match their request for a 1024x768 screen resolution, though it's also the aspect ratio of my monitor so it was convenient on my end as well.

whereisdaniel• 16 years ago

It took me over a month (I work full time though) to work through the book and I think I understood 90% of it. I've learned a lot and I'm very thankful! Now onto the screen casts for hopefully that last 10%!

mrchess3• 16 years ago

As a newbie to Rails 3 this looks great. Been using Sinatra this whole time and I'm ready to make the plunge with the RoR 3 improvements. Thanks :)

mrchess3• 16 years ago

Do any of these vid casts cover comet & rails? I don't see it on the ToC.

mrchess3• 16 years ago

nvm I think I found an ajax example! http://railstutorial.org/chapters/following-users#sec:a_work...

railsjedi• 16 years ago

Looks amazing. I'll definitely be recommending this to everyone I know getting started with Rails.

baddox• 16 years ago

Wait, you have to pay for these?

jkincaid• 16 years ago

Forgive me if the answer to this is obvious (I skimmed the linked page), but how much Rails/general programming experience do I need to be able to follow this?

jjcm• 16 years ago

If you're already familiar with MVC and have a basic background in scripting languages, 30 minutes or so of rails experience should allow you to follow the screencasts without a problem.

listic• 16 years ago

What is the best way to familiarize oneself with MVC, if one hasn't been exposed to it? I am an embedded programmer ("C"), learning web programming now.

fdschoeneman• 16 years ago

You should probably understand a little bit of html & css. Other than that you should be good to go.

mhartl11• 16 years ago

I've added a note about prerequisites here: http://railstutorial.org/screencasts#prerequisites

gmichnikov• 16 years ago

What, if any, prerequisites are there?

mhartl11• 16 years ago

Good question. I've added a note addressing this: http://railstutorial.org/screencasts#prerequisites.

phr• 16 years ago

Michael,

I've been working through the HTML version; great job! I especially appreciate the coverage of Ruby Version Manager, git (topic branches, merging), Heroku deployment via git, and TDD via rspec. You can read all about something, but it doesn't really sink in until you've typed the commands yourself -- even if those commands are dictated word-for-word by a tutorial. I generally dislike video tutorials, but will take a look at yours.

bricestacey• 16 years ago

I used your tutorial to learn about rvm, Heroku, rspec, and of course rails. Not sure I can spring for $85 screencasts right now, but wish I could. Thank you for your work.

kasiaiberto• 16 years ago

Congratulations Michael! Thanks for all your hard work! The Rails Tutorial has already been an indispensable source of information for both students and developers. It cannot get any better now when augmented by the screencasts!!!

sanchito• 16 years ago

Good timing, just started learning rails and hate reading tech books. #purchased

zacharyz• 16 years ago

Hey Michael, I just wanted to say that this book is fantastic and has been my go to reference for rails 3.0 since I discovered it. Thanks!

vgoel• 16 years ago

Michael Hartl is very good at explaining concepts. Very well written book.

ericflo• 16 years ago

Screencasts are such a time-intensive thing to record, especially high-quality ones like these seem to be. Great to see these being made, though, because for a lot of people visual learning is irreplaceable.

sandGorgon• 16 years ago

Is this relevant for Rails 2 as well ?

On a related question, is Rails 3 a good idea for any new projects (especially those using ActiveMerchant) .. or should one stick to Rails2 until all the plugins/gems are ported ?

In which case, this tutorial is not exactly relevant (for me) right now.

gulhaider• 16 years ago

This is excellent. Thank you very much.

gerdp• 16 years ago

Wich formats are available? Because .mov it's not very standard...

Shamanime• 16 years ago

Congratulations! Awesome!

victor101• 16 years ago

OK. Mike's done a great job. Everyone go get the screencasts already! Now, Mike it's time for you to give us a solid RoR ecommerce book!

The Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial screencasts are out

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