
Play by Play: Zed Shaw - kmfrk
https://peepcode.com/products/play-by-play-zed-shaw
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frou_dh
Watched the whole thing. Fairly good.

Rather than the approach to hacking together this specific prototype, the more
general nuggets of advice were (predictably) the good stuff.

Seeing the Python part being built up at fairly high speed was interesting,
but the R part was a bit fumbling and the graphs nonsensical (both because it
was essentially random data, and you didn't even know what the Python part was
doing at that point in the video).

(Different type of thing, but here's the best Zed video I've seen:
<http://vimeo.com/2723800>)

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zedshaw
Glad you liked it. Yeah, my R is a little rusty but hopefully you got the
general idea of gathering stats and then tracking them to see if you can
improve them.

~~~
frou_dh
Yes, certainly. I'm also very glad to pay money for this type of thing
because, for whatever human reason, screencasts click with me and I retain a
lot from them compared to reading.

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dpritchett
Great idea for a peepcode series. I thoroughly enjoyed Zed's 0MQ talk from
PyCon this year [1]. I liked it so much that I dug up all of the Zed I could
find on Youtube, Vimeo, and Blip. I'm very interested in this product.

[1] <http://blip.tv/file/4878885?utm_source=player_embedded>

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igorgue
I saw Zed live too at SuperConf in Florida, I had dinner with him, he's really
what he represents, just a very good programmer, professional and guy, by far
the best I know in our field.

He gave me some advices about my career and programming in general (and
specific: Testing in Python), we even joke about silly stuff (e.g.: The Social
Network movie).

~~~
bstar
Professional is not a word I would use for Zed. Someone that's professional
would not be as confrontational and antagonistic as Zed is. He seems to be
that way, often to his own detriment.

With that said, the aggressive side makes him a very unique individual that
many of us highly respect. I don't aspire to be like the guy, but he sure does
motivate me to step up my standards and accomplish more. Zed's just way more
interesting than Professional.

~~~
gnaritas
He's commenting on Zed the actual person, not Zed the on-line persona that
you're talking about. These aren't necessarily the same things.

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BasDirks
How did I not know about peepcode? I don't mean to hijack this post but: is it
worth the money? Does anyone have experience with their videos?

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briandoll
Peepcode is awesome. This is from the 'play by play' series, which is probably
one of the only places you can get to watch an expert work.

The other topical videos are great as well. It must be an incredible amount of
work that goes into scripting, programming, recording and editing them and the
result is a really high quality learning tool.

I prefer to watch them twice through. Once to just soak it up in one pass, and
a second time to dig in and play around with things as the video progresses.
They are well bookmarked as well, so you can skip ahead or back to a specific
section easily.

Every one of them that I've purchased has been well worth the money. I've
purchased tons of books over the years that were a huge disappointment and
cost way more. You can't go wrong with a PeepCode.

~~~
BasDirks
My wallet hates you.

~~~
briandoll
Your career thanks you.

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fdb
The Play by plays are awesome. If you just look at a finished product, code
looks so effortless. However, even experts struggle getting it right: only
through understanding the problem, trial-and-error and a lot of refactoring
does code become "effortless".

I recommend the PbP of Gary Bernhardt: great tips on VIM, Git and RSpec.

~~~
telemachos
Gary now is selling a subscription service of his own with screencasts:
<https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts>. There's a free sample one
([https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/how-a...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/how-
and-why-to-avoid-nil)) and then it's $9 a month.

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jschuur
I liked his earlier Play by Play preview videos better, where you actually got
a small snippet of the conversation as a sample, so you could get a feel for
each of the featured coder's style and tone:

<http://peepcode.com/products/play-by-play-fhwang>

This one was all content overview and too much of a glowing summary of Zed's
accomplishments (a third of the preview) at the start for my taste.

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swah
It would be more interesting to have a 3 month timelapse of Zed's screen. That
would explain his productivity better :)

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zedshaw
Hmmm, that could be interesting actually. It might be possible to replicate
that with source code checkins on a project.

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swah
I'm watching it; the format is a little bit strange. Mostly just Zed giving
tips to another guy, should get better.

Almost 2 hrs of video.

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xutopia
Just days after my unlimited account expires.

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enry_straker
If you really want to, just e-mail them and ask for it.

The folks at peepcode are fantastic. Very pragmatic and polite.

And you have nothing to lose. :-)

