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.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was working as a C# developer in a big, old, traditional enterprise environment. I had burned out and I was falling out of love with programming.
A friend introduced me to Ruby and I became excited again. Railscasts helped me immensely in being able to very quickly build things. This motivated me to continue and before long I was able to change jobs and start using Ruby and Rails full time.
I just want to say thank you for everything you've done for the rails community. you have been a hero of mine since i started learning rails a decade ago. i hope you are enjoying life and thriving cause you have earned it and deserve it. thank you again for all the help.
I thought it was because you weren't making enough... How wrong was I lol. I've made a lot of similar videos though and it's an enormous amount of work.
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.
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.
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 !
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.
Echoing others, Ryan and Railscasts (and Asciicasts!) were instrumental in my own Rails and web development journey. When the subscription episodes were introduced, it was a no-brainer to pay for that for myself and for my team.
Obviously it was sad when Ryan had to stop, but it was important he focused on himself. Either way, still grateful for all the helpful content he put out to make us better developers.
In no particular order, some interesting flashbacks to that period of web development:
Readit News
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.
I will go into detail on why I stopped RailsCasts in part 3, but I will say it wasn’t because of the community. You all have been awesome.
A friend introduced me to Ruby and I became excited again. Railscasts helped me immensely in being able to very quickly build things. This motivated me to continue and before long I was able to change jobs and start using Ruby and Rails full time.
Thanks.
The intangibles on this effort are huge!
Thank you :)
Everything I am and every single penny I've earned can be attributed back to you or M. Hartl. I'm so happy I stumbled into rails 10 years ago.
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.
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.
Obviously it was sad when Ryan had to stop, but it was important he focused on himself. Either way, still grateful for all the helpful content he put out to make us better developers.
In no particular order, some interesting flashbacks to that period of web development:
Billing with Stripe: http://railscasts.com/episodes/288-billing-with-stripe
Upgrading to Rails 4: http://railscasts.com/episodes/415-upgrading-to-rails-4
Facebook Open Graph: http://railscasts.com/episodes/363-facebook-open-graph
PayPal recurring billing: http://railscasts.com/episodes/289-paypal-recurring-billing
PDF with Prawn: http://railscasts.com/episodes/153-pdfs-with-prawn-revised
Thanks for all you did Ryan! Hope you are keeping well.