The last few weeks, I have been going through the Rails Best Practices courses offered at www.codeschool.com. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences with this method of learning. I wish something like this had been developed when I was younger. The methods used to teach were definitely interesting. The beginning of each of the lessons was an old-school game with funny sounds effects. It had me laughing and excited to see what they had to offer.

Of the many points that were discussed in these courses, the most compelling thing that kept me going was how much it allowed me to re-factor a lot of the code that I write every day. For example, making your validation methods private. It also gave me an insight in what to look for when learning new material, regardless of where it comes from.

The speaker (Gregg Pollack) does a phenomenal job of putting difficult concepts in easy to understand real-world situations. Along with his speaking, the slides are equally as easy to understand and I walked away feeling like I actually learned something after each lesson, even something as trivial as the .try() method.

Although I did learn a ton from taking this course, the quizzes at the end of the lessons were way too easy. The code could have been copied and pasted from the lessons with changed variable names. With the content that was given during the lessons, they could have come up with much better ways of testing their audience.

All in all, I give this a 4.5/5. The material they present to you is amazing. A bunch of little tricks can really add up. Quizzes…way too easy.

• Nick Bucciarelli

Jack Russell Software