Online Ruby Programming Course from Pragmatic Studio (opens in new tab)

Also, http://rubymonk.com (disclaimer: by my firm).

Currently has free courses with new, paid content coming shortly. $5 per month, all you can eat for access to the paid courses (free courses remain free). Course creators get royalties (and keep copyright, of course).

Instructor at RailsTutors here. We just launched our next class, and I should point out that ours is live instruction and a month-long class-based curriculum. It's a HUGE difference from watching online videos. I don't want to market too much in this thread, but if you're interested just check out our curriculum and see what our previous students are saying: railstutors.com

Speaking of Ruby Reloaded, when is the next class? I'm thinking you're not going to make April at this point. :) Out of all of them, I think yours would be considered the only advanced one right?

i'm doing a thing at http://bloc.io too, similar to RailsTutors

are there comparable options for python? from my searching, I havent seen any as thorough as some of these.

I dove into programming in November as a complete newbie. I use every resource under the sun... railscasts, http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book, Treehouse, Codecademy, RailsTutors, This course, among dozens of others. This course is very well structured and offers a deep understanding into the Ruby language that none of the other resources compares to. For me, I take a bit from everything. I am confident that the route I am taking would blow away any formal education for building web applications. So a $199 price tag is extremely reasonable. There are other FREE ways to learn as well. To each their own.

There's a bubble in teaching programming right now. Anyone with any kind of content is trying to cash in.

As good as Code School is (I'm not familiar with Treehouse), its Try Ruby lessons are relatively shallow. A good introduction, sure, but I think this Prag course goes somewhat further.

They don't help with beginning programming topics because the primary thing beginners have to learn is reading and writing code. The videos mostly help beginners who have been convinced through "learning modality" marketing to fear reading and writing as a teaching technique. After that, if they aren't typing and reading they aren't learning to code.

Where videos help is with demonstrating visually dominant technique topics, like CSS layout, how to use Vim, how to change the path in Windows, how to run a debugger, etc.

I personally dont think it is, at least if I consider the things I am good at and how I got there. I read books. I find that tutorials and online classes actually slow me down.

I think this can appeal to people used to a classroom setting. It can also appeal to people see it as a chance to commit to things, like to videos coming up each week.

I'm 65% through the Pragmatic course, and the answer is that it of course depends on your learning style.

Books are great, but I enjoy the lectures, combined with the follow up exercises. I intend to supplement with books and the amount of free material on the web, but I feel the quality so far is worth the price.

Unlike a book, the instructors check in on you to see how you're doing, and ask for honest feedback. And you get access to a mailing list where so far I've seen any question answered very quickly, and without some of the intimidation one can feel asking "noob" questions in other places.

Again, I don't think it is an "either/or" proposition. But I do feel like this combined with other resources is a good option.

$199