[HN Gopher] RailsCasts Retrospective Part 1: The Fuel
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RailsCasts Retrospective Part 1: The Fuel
Author : nickjj
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-03-05 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rbates.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (rbates.dev)
| rossta wrote:
| I got my start in web development right around the time Ryan
| started RailsCasts, the early days of Rails. He inspired a
| generation of developers, me included, to learn the ins and outs
| of the framework and its ecosystem. His weekly posts were
| required viewing. I'd catch myself at work using his catch
| phrases: "Yay that works!"
|
| I'd encourage anyone who hasn't seen RailsCasts to check it out.
| Many software content creators follow in his footsteps. He set a
| standard for teaching through screencasts that still holds up
| today.
|
| I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his series.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I started writing code professionally in the mid 90s, and by
| ~2010 I was very burnt out.
|
| Rails was a breath of fresh air. Both the framework and language
| themselves, but also the communities. It helped me feel
| rejuvenated and ready for a second chapter in my career.
|
| Ryan and RailsCasts were a BIG part of that.
| otikik wrote:
| Railscast was _chef's kiss_. I was sad when it ended.
| HalcyonicStorm wrote:
| I owe a lot to Ryan Bates and Railscasts for transforming from a
| CS student to junior software engineer. It provided the details
| in mentorship that supplemented what I received IRL at work.
| Nic0 wrote:
| RailsCasts was awesome, thank you!
| robertwpearce wrote:
| RailsCasts was an incredible help in my early web career, and I
| was _so_ _so_ grateful for the time and effort that went in to
| each episode. I 've wondered about this story for years, and it's
| wonderful to see this story start to get told. I hope Ryan is
| doing okay and in a good place!
| charlysisto wrote:
| I can only join the chorus and sing the praises of Ryan Bates.
| Railscasts was a blessing, I checked his videos almost every day.
| Sad when he left - spoiler alert, some sort of burnout I
| understood at the time... Ironically I now work for a startup
| helping employees cope with their work environnement. Very
| curious to finally hear Ryan spill out the whole story... and
| happy to hear about him again !
| Ecco wrote:
| Railscasts definitely helped me Become a better engineer, and I
| remember eagerly waiting for each new episode. Thank you Ryan for
| all your hard work!
| dieselgate wrote:
| Great perspective! Wasn't familiar with the beginning history of
| RailsCasta as I didn't begin working with the framework until
| maybe 2014/5. Still a big fan of rails and a good reminder to
| check out the screencasts again.
|
| But my goodness so much has changed in the past 5/10 years (no
| surprise of course). Just last year I was converting coffeeacript
| files to es6 in a rails codebase now we're converting rails to
| Node.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >now we're converting rails to Node.
|
| Isn't that just a full re-write, or is there a process?
| todd3834 wrote:
| The article says it was too sustainable but we have to wait for
| the next part to find out why. Cliffhanger ending! Very
| interested in why this couldn't be sustained.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Some people find public self-promotion 1000x as exhausting as
| other people. I can imagine that this could have been part of
| it.
| halfdan wrote:
| There's also a lot of pressure to deliver weekly episodes if
| that was your goal. I think at some point you become unable
| to reflect that you're approaching burnout and should have
| taken a break twenty episodes ago.
| petercooper wrote:
| A lot of people I've known in this space have run into the
| problem where making content became their job and it meant
| they weren't doing the "real work" that created fuel for
| creating the content. That is, the best content came from
| talking about the challenges and techniques learnt in their
| "day job" but now their day job was running a
| screencast/tutorial business.
| xc0xc wrote:
| Same as most of the comments here, RailsCasts taught me a ton
| about Rails and saved thousands of hours. Thank you Ryan for
| creating a treasury of Rails knowledge.
| jakedahn wrote:
| rbates, if you're reading this, thank you!
|
| I learned so much from railscasts in my early software
| engineering journey. Your videos took me from copy-pasta
| extraordinaire to actually understanding how to build complex
| features and wire things together.
|
| I wouldn't be where I am today without you.
| alxprc wrote:
| RailsCasts helped me so much in getting started with Rails in the
| late 2000s. It opened my eyes to how one can effectively
| structure a web application in general, from caching to
| authorisation. Ryan's explanations were concise yet accessible;
| it felt like a colleague showing me cool stuff.
|
| I figured it must have been popular, but wouldn't have guessed as
| high as $1M revenue. Looking forward to reading the rest of this
| series.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| These were some of the most valuable things on the web. I
| actually didn't follow the video content as much as the written
| form which was just what I needed. When someone on my team would
| come and ask me how to do something, I would often just point
| them at the railscast for that topic and know that they were
| going to build it in a reasonable way. So many tricky things
| became so easy to do, that I could really focus on the product
| and not the technical means. Web development has slid backward
| from those days in many ways.
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(page generated 2023-03-05 23:01 UTC)