I didn’t realise that the entire RubyConf 2007 video archive is now online here. Some really good talks there.
Video may seem a poor teaching format, but sometimes I just get tired of reading all the time – and picking up some of the personality of the speaker can be very instructive and convincing. A good presentation can be interesting, educational, and steer you in a direction quite impossible with self-selected study which, almost by definition, only teaches you what you were already looking for. Watching what someone else has to say, and what they think is important, can be really interesting.
It’s great to live in a world where gigabytes upon gigabytes of good-quality conference video are available online, for free.
And there’s other conferences on that site as well – I’m still working my way through, but the Jamis Buck segment at Mountain West, Rails Code Review, was fascinating. I respect Buck a lot – hell, he’s basically second in command, and so I’m very interested in hearing what his views are on what is and isn’t good coding practise.
Check it out.