Envycast review; What's new in Rails 2.2
So I originally wasn’t really that interested in RailsEnvy’s Rails 2.2 envycast, even though I’m a big fan of the RailsEnvy podcast. I’ve read the release notes guide on Rails 2.2, and I subscribe to the GitHub Edge Rails Commits feed, so I generally feel like I’m up-to-date on what’s going in to Rails before it’s released. I even contribute to Rails now and then.
I was pleasantly surprised to find I was learning things I didn’t know about Rails only a few minutes in to the “envycast”. (Uh, don’t let that get out, okay? Just keep that between us, and I’ll go on pretending I knew that stuff already). Jason and Gregg didn’t disappoint and cram so much new information in to your head in the 45 minutes that you’ll probably need to watch it two or three times.
The examples are very easy to follow and professionally done, and Jason keeps it active and lively with his quick, witty humor. It covers updates to all the rails gems: ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport, ActionPack, ActionController, and Railties, as well as new i18n (Internationalization), and new Performance features. I’m really excited about the performance testing improvements, and I’ll be looking at upgrading my apps to 2.2 much sooner than I had previously planned.
I almost missed the “Rails can’t scale” jokes and the cheesy sound effects, which were absent. If you’re familiar with their weekly podcast this screencast will seem a little more professional than you’re used to. They’ve put quite a lot of work in to this envycast; I’m impressed with the quality.
On the down side:
- Much of the information from the video is already summarized in the release notes guide, and
- You still have to READ the accompanying pdf to get details on many features not mentioned in the video, such as memoization, one of my favorite new features (Who wants to read, anyway? pfft)
- You may find a lot of the features cool and immediately want to upgrade to 2.2, thus creating more work for yourself. Ignorance is bliss, right?
On the plus side:
- In summarizing all the major improvements to Rails in 2.2, Jason and Gregg do a wicked job of bringing them to life and making it easy to understand.
- Quick background information is smoothly inserted where appropriate so you don’t feel lost, even if you’re not immediately familiar with the feature.
- The pdf makes up for any possible shortcomings in the breadth or depth of the video, and includes many tidbits I’ve not found elsewhere.
- You’ll finally learn what i18n actually stands for.
- You’d be supporting the Rails community, and that’s wicked cool awesome beans, or whatever the kids say these days.
I’ve decided it’s awesome, and I’m going to get copies for the rest of my team. You probably should, too. .. and then pretend you already knew everything about 2.2.
Trackbacks
Use the following link to trackback from your own site:
http://blog.stevensoroka.ca/trackbacks?article_id=69
