KC on Rails

Pragmatic Studio Rocks!

Posted by Jaime Bellmyer Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:03:00 GMT

I just attended the Advanced Ruby on Rails training by Pragmatic Studio, the same people who brought you the Pickaxe (Programming Ruby) and the Rails Bible (Agile Web Development with Rails). It was awesome.

For starters, two of the authors of the Rails book were there for the entire three days - Dave Thomas (not the Wendy's guy) and Mike Clark. Both were true gurus, and it was amazing to be taught by them. The third presenter was Chad Fowler, who co-authored the Programming Ruby book, and most recently put together Rails Recipes. So you get all three authors for all three days of this course, and they're not just taking turns presenting. They were actively involved in the discussion for all eight hours. They even ate lunch with us, and were very cool about autographing our books. Yeah, I'm that kind of geek.

One more member rounded out their team - Nicole Clark, who happens to be Mike's wife, handled all the administrative aspects of the training, and I can honestly say it went off without a hitch. She organized our schedules, shuttled us where we needed to go, and generally kept things running smoothly. I'm ashamed to say I almost forgot to mention her, simply because when someone like that does their job that well, you tend to forget they were doing anything at all. You only think about things like missing supplies or disorganized schedules when they happen.

If you've ever thought about Rails training, and perhaps especially if you've NEVER thought about it, these guys are the best. I'm simply floored that (relatively) little money buys direct training with this caliber of teachers.

I will definitely be posting a lot of what I've learned over the next few weeks, as I apply it to my own projects. The nice thing is, as an alumnus of their training, I'm part of their larger support community, and that will be helpful as I hit stumbling blocks. Stay tuned!