Screencasts
If a picture is worth thousand words and a video is worth thousands of pictures, then why wouldn’t you use the most effective form of communication? If someone can demonstrate something for me rather than hand me his notes, wouldn’t I learn lot faster and better?
This is why I prefer screencasts and live seminar over reading a magazine or a book.
Railscasts is a screencast by Ryan Bates and released three times a week. Unlike anyone else, he releases episodes on regular timely basis. They’re all interesting, fun and extremely informative for anyone regardless of their level. They’re all also FREE!
For more in-depth learning, there’s Peepcode. Peepcode is not free, but you get lot more than what you pay for. Each episode is $9 but you get a rather substantial discount when you buy in bulk. I know it’s cheap, but don’t let the price fool you, you really do get lot more.
Both Railscasts and Peepcode are about Rails, but if you’re focused more on Ruby like me, there’s Rubyology.com by Chris Matthieu. His screencasts cover basic fundamentals in Ruby. They’re great for beginning Ruby and I highly recommend it although the quality of the video and the audio can at times be very rough.
Have fun learning!
