Ruby Course Update and What's Next

Why was the astronaut quiet?

Because he spaced out.

😂

You’d be forgiven for thinking we spent our summer staring vacantly into the galaxies. It’s certainly been awhile since our last newsletter.

And while we did indeed gaze at the night sky a few times, we’ve mostly been in the Studio updating our first-ever video course: Ruby Programming.

The Ruby language is friendly, productive, and stable—just three of the reasons we still love it. But after ten years, the course was getting a little far out there, if you know what we mean. 🪐

So today we’re excited to announce that our long-time popular Ruby Programming course has been entirely updated for Ruby 3.2!

In addition to re-filming all the live-coding videos, we added new sections on unit testing, immutable data values, and exception handling. And we streamlined it so you can get through all 32 videos in just 4 hours. More time for star-gazing! ✨

We also updated all the exercises, and added a new “Ruby in Rails” section to each one. These new sections have examples of Ruby concepts being applied in the context of a Rails application. Even if you’re not using Rails, it’s a great way to see Ruby code used in the wild.

We think you’re gonna love it!

New to Ruby, or just need a refresher?

We distilled everything you need to know about Ruby, assembled it in the right order, and neatly packaged it as a video course that’s paced for newcomers. 🤩

Access to the course includes:

• 32 carefully-crafted videos where we build a Ruby gem from scratch

• 26-chapter workbook with exercises where you build a different Ruby gem than in the videos

• Animations to visualize the key concepts and get a solid mental model for OO programming

• Source code for each video and exercise, and the final code for two Ruby gems

• No time limit or subscription: with a one-time payment you own the course forever!

It’s a free update if you own the previous version of the course!

Yup, if you already own the original Ruby course (thank you!), then the updated course is free. 🙌

Just head over to your account dashboard and under “Free Updates” click the big green “REDEEM” button. You’ll still have access to your original Ruby course, plus you’ll get the updated course.

Do you need to retake the updated course?

Well, it depends.

If you completed the previous version of the course in the past, say, six months, then you might want to dip back into the new modules on unit testing, struct and data values, and exception handling. It also might be worth peeking at the new “Ruby in Rails” sections of the exercises.

For the rest of you, the fundamentals of Ruby haven’t changed much over the years. And you’ve likely traveled far beyond the fundamentals by now.

All the same, we hope you’ll appreciate having an updated course to refer back to as you continue your journey with Ruby and Rails. 🧑‍🚀 🚀

What’s Next? 👀

So far this year we’ve been focused on course updates (Ruby and LiveView), but now we have our sights set on a brand new course. The example application is nearly complete and the outline has moved from the back of a napkin to an actual Markdown file.

If plans stay on track, something extraordinary will soon take flight. In fact, some might even say this hot new course will have wings. 😉

Keep your eyes on the horizon…