There is great value in the Ruby on Rails podcasts and screencasts we have available today. Some podcasts have gone away while others have appeared, and others have changed hosts. The title is a bit deceiving, I’m including some screencasts too.
I wrote up a list of Rails learning resources last week, which included some screencasts. I list those here to keep the resource consistent for folks finding this in the future.
Podcasts
I have far too many podcasts in the Overcast app on my iPhone, but these always get listened to first.
Remote Ruby – three developers, chat about Ruby on Rails, what they’re up to, and the community at large. Occasional guests.
Ruby on Rails Podcast – this podcast has been around a long time and has seen a few hosts. Episodes consist mainly of interviews with people in the industry or who use Rails for their jobs. I do really like the guests and topics, many are the cutting edge of what we are being exposed to in work today.
Ruby Rogues – a long time show featuring a panel of known people from the Rails community who discuss various topics with guests. Episodes are mainly a single timely topic the panel and guest discuss. Approaching 500 episodes.
Rails with Jason – interview-style show with Jason Sweet. Jason has some great guests on his show. If you can listen to only one, I’d try this one. If you can’t get enough of Jason, he has written some great articles.
Maintainable – hosted by Robby Russell, long-time Rails developer and founder of Planet Argon, a Rails development agency. From the Maintainable site:
On Maintainable, we speak with seasoned practitioners who have worked past the problems often associated with technical debt and legacy code. In each episode, our guests will share stories and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges
Running in Production – a podcast about how folks are running various frameworks in a production environment and what it takes to do so. Not strictly talking about Rails, but there are a handful of episodes specifically dealing with challenges of running Rails in production.
The Bike Shed – discussion podcast, with two people from Thoughtbot. Much of the discussion encompasses issues the hosts face while working at the company. The episodes aren’t strictly Rails but cover topics many of us face in our day-to-day development work.
Screencasts
Drifting Ruby – created by Dave Kimura, also a long-time Rails developer. Dave is currently up to 227 episodes with episodes running from ~10 min to ~30 min. You might think these screencasts are probably like those from Go Rails, hardly. I think they complement each other very well. Even for topics, they are the same. I find the approaches very different. There are also free episodes, while others require a small monthly fee.
Go Rails – created by Chris Oliver, who is a great contributor to the community. At the time of this writing, Chris is up to 330 videos of varying lengths (~5 min to ~30 min) covering a full breadth of topics, including everything from Rails concepts to the inevitable problem you’ll face when creating Rails applications. There is also a forum that accompanies the videos were you can ask questions or answer some if you so choose. There are some free videos and a Pro plan you can pay to get the rest of the videos for a reasonable monthly fee. It’s a bargain for sure.
RubyTapas – created by Avdi Grimm, a long-time member of the Ruby community. From the RubyTapas website:
RubyTapas is for the busy Ruby or Rails developer who is ready to reach the next level of code mastery. Short, focused screencasts twice a week will introduce you to a wide variety of intermediate to advanced Ruby concepts and techniques, Object-Oriented design principles, testing practices, refactoring skills, and much more.
RailsCasts – created by Ryan Bates, these short screencasts were the original for the Ruby community focusing on Ruby on Rails. Ryan stepped away from making these a while ago, but many are still relevant today and free.
There’s so much great content in these resources. Whether you like to listen to podcasts or prefer to watch people code in a screencast, there’s plenty to learn. If you find other Ruby and Rails related podcasts, I’d love to know about them.