Taking PeepCode for a spin

sergiopereira — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:25:00 GMT

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.

GIT

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.

GIT Internals (PDF)

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.

Rails from Scratch Part 1 and Part 2

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.

Objective-C for Rubyists

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.

Trying out a Randori

sergiopereira — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:50:00 GMT

Tonight's meeting of the Software Craftsmanship Group was led by Uncle Bob Martin.

This time around we tried a Randori-style coding dojo. The task was to build a clock and, although we fell short of the original goal of having a GUI, there was plenty to be learned in this process.

I felt it was an interesting way to learn about your own performance under a moderate amount of pressure. More importantly, at least for me, was getting exposure to BDD and pairing with other developers that are a few step ahead of me on that particular road.

Once again, because I'm not a Ruby developer by day, I felt a little bit uneasy taking my turn and going up there to code a little bit. But I would not pass the experience, otherwise why even bother showing up for the event at all.

The whole thing was captured on tape. ~~Hopefully the video will be made available and I'll come back and link to it here.~~

UPDATE: Doug has put some videos up.

Software Craftsmanship - Coding Dojo - Kata

Software Craftsmanship - Coding Dojo - Randori

Video - The Langston's Ant

sergiopereira — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:41:00 GMT

Remember one recent post when I talked about the Code Kata that I attended? Well, Micah prepared a screencast version of that Kata and that video is now available.

It's a short screencast (14') and even if Ruby is not your cup of tea, it's interesting to watch BDD being practiced.

Langston's Ant in Ruby Kata from Micah Martin on Vimeo.

Sergio Pereira : Ruby, Video