Learn Ruby (opens in new tab)

There used to be a time where people created programming tutorials just for the heck of it: to learn the language better themselves, to do something good, to get some rep, to make a name for themselves. I wrote quite a few myself - enjoyed every minute of it - both the process of writing (writing stuff down forces you to be honest about knowing it well) and the feedback afterwards. Without asking for $10K on Kickstarter!! I see the direction this is going and I don't like it at all. I hope Kickstarter won't end up harming open source.

Around minute 1:01, in the kickstarter video, he says that ruby is used by facebook o_O. I don't think that it is, is it?

This violates Kickstarter rules.

See the $50 pledge: The price will jump to $100 after the Kickstarter, so sign up now!"

Kickstarter project guidelines: Kickstarter cannot be used to fund e-commerce, business, and social networking websites or apps. (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines#prohibited)

No matter if you throw the "education" label on it, it's still a paid membership site. A business website.

Even if it were allowed, it's miscategorized. The "Open Software" category is to fund open source projects, not education efforts about open source software. I don't see that any of the software that would come out of this project would be released as open source.

I wonder if this project will be as poignant as other ruby learning projects.

I wouldn't pay $25 for this Kickstarter project.

Codeacademy and Udemy has Ruby classes to grasp enough knowledge and cost less than this.

This is great, but there are already many sites that teach ruby through clean slides, animations and gamification. Most notably (with respect to ruby) is code school.

I'm all for more resources, but I don't see how this is filling a market gap.

There are lots of places to learn Ruby. At this point, you could Google just about any question that you had.

How about something more ambitious? Anyone want to crowd fund a small satellite or lunar rover for the Google Lunar Prize?

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

It's probably not a good idea to use a "popular game character" in your example images, even if you don't name him. The sprite itself is copyrighted by Nintendo, and using it in your game like that is probably not going to fall under fair use.

I actually know and have worked with Tom Black extensively. He was an instructor with me at General Assembly in NYC and, after being in the Ruby education space, it's clear there is a market for great developer education courses. The target market isn't the typical hacker news reader, it's the job seeker looking to expand their marketability. There are plenty of 'free' resources to learn cooking, yet there is still a huge demand for cooking schools. Many of us don't think twice about paying for Railscasts or CodeSchool because they provide value to the user. I don't think there is anything wrong with selling a high quality instructional product to people who make be overwhelmed by the variety of free and occasionally dubious offerings. When I was getting started, the Rails Tutorial was a bargain at around $100. I can't speak for the quality of Tom's product (yet,) but there is certainly a demand and a need for quality programs for new developers. Given some of the utter nonsense I've seen on kickstarter, this is a worthy project.