A rainy weekend and some brain hunger made me finally do something I had been meaning to do for a while.
Once I posted about my interest in screencasts
and their power to make information memorable. This last weekend I filled up my shopping cart over at
PeepCode with a bunch of material that was on my to watch
list.
This video was pretty interesting. It will definitely let you get off the ground quickly
with git. I learned and still remember more from
this screencast than from any other time spent on documentation and tutorials.
This is one of those screencasts where the author starts cranking out commands
at the command line. If you can't stand the command line, you won't like this one.
The advantage is that the command line is the same in all platforms.
My only negative comments, which is applicable to almost all the other videos I've
watched, is that the author has the habit of clearing the screen way too early
and often. At least it's recorded so you can rewind and absorb the information
at your own pace.
While on my git learning mode, I went ahead and bought this PDF as well. Boy, this is
money. If you're a sucker for internal details, this one is for you.
The PDF was written by Scott Chacon,
who is very well known in git circles. The material is dense but is very well
explained by Scott. Worth every penny.
The PDF ships with some videos from gitcasts and
some handy shell shortcuts.
I already have a reasonable level of experience with Rails. What made me buy these two episodes
was to see a competent Rails programmer showing how he works. After watching both videos I was happy to
see that I was not so far off. I know these screencasts are definitely simplified for the newbie and
that a number of things changed in Rails since the first edition of this material, but
the good advices on how to organize code and use the Rake tasks are still valid.
There's a whole lot more to Rails than it's possible to cram in 2h40 of screencasts but
if you need to start somewhere, this is a good choice. I wish there was a little more
ActiveRecord and plugins covered but, hey, it's still one of the greatest bargains out there.
I just started watching this one. My early impression (25 minutes in) is that its pace
is a little too frantic. I don't buy the argument that knowing Ruby helps you learning
Objective-C because of their SmallTalk heritage.
I've been trying to get into Objective-C from books and whitepapers but I had hopes a
screencast like this would be more effective. I'm not too optimistic so far (I'll update
this post if I'm convinced otherwise.)
Worth the investment
A good thing with the PeepCode episodes is that they are positioned at a price point (US $9.00) that
doesn't let you feel too bad, even if you expected more of them. They have definitely been worth more
than the sticker price.
I'm looking forward to a few more episodes later this year. RSpec and Haml are on my crosshair.