So, most schools are a generation behind the curve with respect to programming languages. This is a-ok since Computer Science is an art of concepts and not specific realms of code.

So as a ruby programmer I’m not rushing out in search of an academic institution to fill my continuing educational needs.

There are a great number of awesome resources in the Ruby/Rails community for knowledge transfer and I’d like to spotlight a couple of them:

Peepcode is king of the hill. Geoffrey Grosenbach is a king among men and he’s making his living helping other people make theirs. At $9/per 50+ minute cast these things are gold. Every one of them has taken me miles towards practicing better coding. Every time I go to dive into a new and strange aspect of the rails landscape I always check to see if Geoff has provided a sights and sounds tour for me.

Railscasts is sponsored by Peepcode and its great 3-15 minute sessions covering the full gamut. Ryan Bates is doing awesome work with these and they’re great to see how someone else approaches day to day code work.

I like books, but google is my constant coding aid, so they tend to sit on the shelf unless google fails me.

When I’m totally stymied, thats when the ruby/rails community kicks in.

rubyonrails-talk out on google groups is a high volume forum for all things ruby. Search up cause most questions aren’t original. Given sufficient detail someone reading along almost assuredly has the answer you’re looking for.

Local ruby groups are also an amazing and underutilized resource. I live in the Seattle area and am making a habit of hanging out with the Seattle Ruby Brigade guys as often as possible. There’s always a vet hanging around to point out my obvious mistakes.

This community has soo many resources for continuing to learn and grow. There’s pretty much no excuse to hold on to all your old clumsy slow habits (I’m more lecturing my self here than anyone else ;).