This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by David Heinemeier Hansson.
Original Post: Seeing is believing — even for programmers!
Feed Title: Loud Thinking
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking
Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp
I've received an incredible amount of positive feedback on the 10 minute video of Rails. It's a reasonably comprehensive first impression (despite showing just 5-10% of Rails) delivered to you for no work at all. Forming a similar impression on a framework that just does text documentation and the odd example is a much more time consuming effort. Straight to the "I'll look at this later" pile.
That's why I've started Rails Academy as a place to hold future, more in-depth, video tutorials on Rails. I even got my Sony microphone hooked up to the stereo now, so that should end my brief career in silent movies.
But more importantly, I hope to ignite a general trend within the programming community at large and Ruby in particular: More showing, less telling! Capable programmers do most frameworks, projects, and languages much more justice than a dry piece of text can. I recognize that some frameworks and languages might be better suited for this than others, which is why I'm focusing mostly on Ruby where it's actually possible to show-off really cool stuff in no time at all.
On that note, I'm thrilled to see Mauricio Fernandez pick up the ball and show off his packaging system for Ruby in a series of gif anims. The fact that he chooses to display his wares using Instiki and Active Record made no difference in my appreciation (okay, just a little, then).
P.S.: I've been doing my own recordings with Snapz Pro X. While it's a great tool (albeit with a slightly weird interface), it does produce .mov files, which have proved somewhat hard to digest for the OS X-challenged people out there. Anyone who wants to donate me a copy of Camtasia will hence be much cheered by all since that'll allow me to convert those mov files to Flash, which everyone should be able to see (check out this old, old sample I did while still developing Rails).
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