
Ryan Bates launches RailsCasts Pro - illdave
http://railscasts.com/pro
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jinushaun
RailsCast is an amazing service and I don't know if I could've ever learned
Rails (and the RoR ecosystem) without it. Definitely a service worth paying
for. I'm glad he's keeping the free episodes because it would be a shame if
newbies shied away from trying it out because episodes were no longer free.

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thibaut_barrere
I think I'm going to subscribe just to say thanks for all his previous
efforts.

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terrellm
I just subscribed to show support, too. There's no doubt that I'll get $9
worth of benefit out of the Pro screencasts and updates.

The amazing thing about RailsCasts are how great they are at helping
developers through sticking points. I can't count the number of times that
I've gone straight to RailsCasts and looked for a tutorial on a particular gem
or how to accomplish a certain task (nested forms, multiple edit, etc). It
sure beats the alternative of Googling and Stack Overflowing for 2-3x the
time.

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trusche
And... How often have you watched a railsast on a particular subject, only to
get an a-ha moment on something only marginally related? Happens to me every
other episode.

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thehodge
This is awesome but I'd rather pay $13 and have him split it with asciicasts

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rbates
I am talking with Eifion to integrate ASCIIcasts more into RailsCasts. Keep an
eye out for that.

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sunchild
Thanks for all your hard work over the years. It is truly, truly appreciated.
I've watched so many Railscasts while learning Rails that my wife rolls her
eyes when she hears the intro chimes.

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johnnyg
That was the easiest buying decision ever. Ryan, you are a mench. $9 a month
for pro videos is a steal.

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azolotov
Railscasts is one of the first resources I recommend people who want to learn
Rails.

I wouldn't have been able to learn Rails as quickly as I did without
Railscasts.

$9 is really a steal :)

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melvinram
All I can say is... What took you so long Ryan?

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tomblomfield
I think we're all here saying the same thing!

Railscasts are amazing - I always felt I should be paying something for them

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desireco42
Now this is a service from someone who contributed to community a lot. Unlike
that textmate debacle where people would pledge money for nothing, this is the
real deal and it is very reasonable. I could see how this could cost more, but
I can see how with this he will probably get good following, provide for Ryan
resources to continue his work.

I will be happy to subscribe to such service and to add, I would subscribe
just to say thanks for years of awesome content.

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gabyar
I'm glad to see an outstandingly helpful member of the rails community earn
income from what has been a mostly altruistic task that must take a lot of
time every week.

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cschep
This feels like a response to destroyallsoftware.com. Which is AWESOME. I'm
glad the "pro" market for screencasts is getting more attention.

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hasanove
They might be awesome, but unless you scroll down to the very bottom and
notice a small note, you would think this a free service. I felt like being
deceived and immediately closed the website after signup confirmation, when
asked to enter credit card details.

I may have paid if I knew it upfront, but this kind of approach is so
annoying, that I would prefer not to pay just because of that.

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gabyar
What are you talking about? The cost is shown in several areas of the page,
and "pro" usually means the pay version.

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briancooley
I think hasanove is talking about destroyallsoftware.com, which is a pay site,
but it's hard to tell from the landing page.

I also think it's the response (i.e., railscasts.com/pro) that is being called
awesome in the root comment, even though the wording is somewhat ambiguous.

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RegEx
I'll definitely give this service a try. Does anyone know of any other premium
rails screencast sites? I recall a link to a funny rails article on HN about a
month ago that was created by a guy who does premium rails cast for $9/mo (the
site has a really dark background). Wasn't able to dig that up after a weekend
of searching.

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jeremymcanally
There's Peepcode (<http://peepcode.com>), but you're probably referring to the
excellent Destroy All Software!
(<https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts>) screencasts.

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barrydahlberg
RailsCasts gets recommended to beginners a lot but every time I go there I'm
kind of overwhelmed and have no idea where to start. The archives go back to
2007 so starting at the beginning seems likely to cover outdated subjects now.
On the front page I see Draper, Spork, Sorcery, Foreman, Pry... none of this
means much to me.

Any suggestions on how to attack this for a relative newbie to rails?

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gurkendoktor
I don't think Railscasts is a great _introduction_ to Rails, but certainly a
resource that beginners can use. What I did was to work my way through the
first parts of "Agile Web Development with Rails" to understand the structure
of rails, then just try to build stuff.

Whenever I had a question or felt somebody should have automated whatever I
was doing, I would search Railscasts. I needed PDF generation, so I would
search for PDF and compare my options.

When you have some experience with current Rails (say, 3.1), actively
following new Railscasts is interesting to see what changed in 3.2, 3.3, 4.0,
...

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rsobers
I'm so glad to see the outpouring of users who are downright happy to pay for
this service. Ryan: you should add a payment option that lets people pay more
than $9 per month. Let us specify the amount. I'd gladly pay more if it meant
you could spend more time producing content.

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Omnipresent
I kind of saw this coming when I got an email from Ryan that he is cutting
down on moderators for Railscasts. I was one of the lazy ones :(

Anyways, I'm going to subscribe not just for future episodes but for all those
episodes from which I've gained immense knowledge.

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mhoofman
I would guess Ryan used <https://stripe.com> to set up reoccurring billing for
Pro.

So will we be seeing an episode or maybe an advanced episode on how Ryan set
up reoccurring billing for Railscasts?

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siong1987
Check out this tutorial on stripe. It has a pretty clear step by step
instructions on how to get it work with Ruby.

In fact, only slight modification needed to make it work with Rails. But, if
you are interested, I can write a blog post about it.

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sunchild
Which tutorial are you referring to? I need that!

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abyssknight
Good for Ryan, this is a great way for him to monetize an already awesome
service.

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happypeter
RailsCasts is awesome, I owe so much more then $9 per month to it.

But here in China, many young students will still think it is too much...bad
bad bad, anybody can do a less pro one, and make it free?

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tsycho
For some reason, RailsCasts.com is not loading up at all for me. Am I the only
one seeing this? If it helps, I am using Chrome 14.0.835.186 on a Mac OSX Snow
Leopard.

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tortilla
Down for everyone. I think RailsCasts is hosted on Linode and
HurricaneElectric is having issues currently.

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sunchild
Back up now.

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tomblomfield
US-only billing arrghhh

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rbates
If you are having trouble subscribing, please let me know. ryan@railscasts.com

Also, PayPal support will be coming soon which should make signup easier for
international.

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Omnipresent
I wonder why Ryan is not blocking access to the source code for pro
screencasts on github. Other pro screencasts such as peepcode protect the
source code as well.

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rbates
I want to keep the experience the same as possible with the free episodes
without losing any conveniences such as browsing the source code. If one finds
the source code interesting, hopefully he will subscribe to watch the video
too.

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grepper34
Honestly, I wish he would charge more. I've gained so much value from this
over the years that I would gladly pay a much higher monthly fee.

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scrrr
Heh.. such comments. You know you can just go ahead and donate Ryan money.
Which is what many Rails devs did in the past anyway..

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grepper34
Who says I haven't? All I'm saying is I wish he'd charge more. He would get
more money overall from the people who would not have thought to do such a
thing :)

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jcapote
Railscasts are cool, but if you want something more advanced, I cannot
recommend destroyallsoftware.com enough

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matthodan
Just got my Pro account-- no brainer.

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hugacow
Rails 3.x jumped the shark. It is getting too complicated for anyone new to
come on easily. This is the reason that Scala, Clojure, Haskell, etc. will
fail, too- complexity. I'm not a PhP guy, but it isn't hard to see why it is
still wildly popular. Make it easy enough, and fun to use, and it will take
hold.

So while he may make money on Rails geeks that continue on and with those that
want to learn, there are fewer that are coming on and will come on now then
there were.

If you like Rails, listen to Ryan. I've been doing RoR a while and really,
really appreciate the Railscasts (and the Asciicasts of his Railscasts- thanks
Eifion!). But if you are looking for a long-term framework to stand by, keep
looking.

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BadassFractal
What web development frameworks would you recommend then if everything from
RoR to Scala is too complex to survive the test of time?

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denysonique
If you want something simple then Sinatra, Flask, or Perl Dancer

