

The Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial screencasts are out - mhartl
http://railstutorial.org/screencasts?

======
mhartl
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.

~~~
locnguyen
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.

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bcrescimanno
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.

~~~
mhartl
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_...](http://railstutorial.org/samples?file=rails_tutorial_lesson_08.zip)

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.

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happy4crazy
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.

~~~
mhartl
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!

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sandGorgon
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.

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wesbaker
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?

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pchristensen
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 :)

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phr
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.

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

~~~
Aqua_Geek
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!

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johnohara
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.

~~~
mhartl
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.

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boundlessdreamz
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 ?

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

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ericflo
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.

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whereisdaniel
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%!

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bricestacey
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.

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mrchess
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 :)

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zacharyz
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!

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

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kasiaiberto
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!!!

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jkincaid
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
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
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.

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

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victor101
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!

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gmichnikov
What, if any, prerequisites are there?

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

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

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

~~~
mrchess
nvm I think I found an ajax example!
[http://railstutorial.org/chapters/following-
users#sec:a_work...](http://railstutorial.org/chapters/following-
users#sec:a_working_follow_button_with_ajax)

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

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

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gulhaider
This is excellent. Thank you very much.

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hello_moto
What wireframe tool do you use Michael?

~~~
mhartl
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_moto
Thanks! Still free (seems like)

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Shamanime
Congratulations! Awesome!

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baddox
Wait, you have to pay for these?

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swombat
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.

~~~
r00k
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.

~~~
swombat
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.

~~~
mhartl
You're right that 1000 pages might be a little crazy. As I noted in another
comment, that total included the pagecount of the _Rails 2.3 Tutorial_ book,
which comes for free with any PDF or bundle purchase. The _Rails 3 Tutorial_
book itself is only around 500 pages. I've updated the descriptions on the
Rails Tutorial website for clarity.

~~~
kingkilr
1000 pages really isn't that much, Django's documentation is about 800 pages
printed last I checked.

