I really love the efforts being put forward by people in our developer community, lots of cool new tools and especially screen casts.  Screen casts are a great way to spend some time and learn something new.

One new screen cast that has quickly become one of my favorites is RubyTapas by Avdi Grimm.  Avdi is a speaker, writer and a Ruby Rouge.

What’s RubyTapas?

These are short, 2.5 to 7 minutes in length, but are laser focused on a very specific aspect of Ruby and published 3 times a week. 

RubyTapas is for the busy Ruby or Rails developer who is ready to reach the next level of code mastery. Short screencasts three times a week will introduce you to a wide variety of intermediate to advanced Ruby concepts and techniques, as well as core Object-Oriented design principles. Lead by head chef Avdi Grimm (author of Exceptional Ruby and Objects on Rails), you’ll go from journeyman to master, one small, tasty plate at a time.

As I write this Avdi has published his 13th episode which covers singleton objects.  The growing list of episodes can be found on the RubyTapas site.   Subscribing to the full list requires a subscription, only $9 per month..so a great deal.

What’s to love about these?

Each episode is a super focused topic, great video and great sound.  This isn’t the best part in my humble opinion; each episode comes with a very well commented Ruby file as well as an HTML document containing the episode explained so you can get a deeper understanding of the concept.  

I have gone through all the episodes and they are pure Ruby, no Rails no Sinatra..just pure Ruby.  I have been working with Ruby for a good number of years and I am learning a bunch from these, great style and techniques.  I wouldn’t say they are for beginners but your mileage may vary.

I’m not affiliated with Avdi at all, just a happy subscriber.  It’s sometimes hard to filter the good from the bad out there.  

Happy Hacking!!