Rails Envy

Hey, not all who listen to podcasts are using Apple products! I like to listen to podcasts on my portable MP3 player and my car stereo, neither of which knows AAC or M4A. (I think my desktop Linux machines can play them though.)

That said, if you want to do an enhanced version go ahead; for those who would get the enhancements it would be nice. But please don’t stop the MP3 version. And thanks for the podcast!

@Rob, That’s a really good idea that won’t affect any of the current listeners – just offer two versions. I think we’ll go with that.

Regarding the enhanced version of the podcast:

Well, I generally listen to your podcast on the way to school on my iPod, which I wouldn’t be able to do if it was “enhanced” (I wouldn’t be able to see the visuals, which would probably make the podcast confusing if it was designed with a screen in mind).

I am still interested in the idea of the enhanced podcast. I currently am subscribed to ‘Railscasts’, which I generally watch if I am trying to do a specific task from the episode. I’d probably watch the first few episodes, but I generally don’t like sitting at my computer to watch/listen to a podcast. The idea of having two podcasts suggested by Rob sounds good. I’m curious what a Rails Envy enhanced podcast will be like. Definitely make a few episodes.

I don’t mind the change to aac or m4a, as long as it works on my iPod.

+1 for an enhanced edition of the podcast.

@Michael, the enhanced version would just let us add in graphics to go along with each story. You wouldn’t miss anything from the normal podcast except maybe we’d spice things up and throw in a logo for what we’re talking about at the time. Or a Rails can’t scale graphic or something.

The cost of extra bling on a podcast that most people will never see (and probably take away from the stupid witty dialogue that makes it so great)… $200 in wasted uber hacker effort . The cost of podcasts coming out on time… priceless.

;-)

Stick to your knitting dudes.

If you had an enhanced version I would subscribe, but for a short podcast like yours it wouldn’t have much value. Bookmarks on longer podcasts I do value though

Yes, would be great to have an enhanced podcast. I’m waiting for it.

Advanced podcasts would be cool, but my pocket would probably be the only thing to see the cool pictures.

I liked the section on components, there’s a great discussion going on in the comments about using Rails components vs. writing a simple view-controller architecture within Rails, like Typo does for its sidebars. I tried something a lot like Typo for a project I just did, and it worked out great – you avoid making multiple requests per page, you can inspect the parameters that your components need (to autogenerate views for configuration), you can validate those parameters, persist the configuration to the database, and easily cache the result of rendering a sidebar with its parameters.

I whipped up a quick blog post that goes through some of the basics at http://blog.uberweiss.net/articles/2008/02/12/sidebars-are-better-than-components.

Keep up the awesome podcasts, they make my Wednesday commute (or Thursday commute, or Friday commute, depending on how many kids you guys end up with) a lot more fun.