A teacher that can actually teach?

Hey Bob-

I'm really sorry if you were offended or disappointed in that aspect of my course. The documentation looking up is definitely on purpose. In my opinion, advanced courses should be about learning how professionals actually work, as hopefully the students are working towards becoming professionals themselves. The more advanced the course, the more likely it is that the student can just "read the documentation" themselves and learn the topic. It is my conjecture that it's most important that students learn that the "all knowing teacher" is not a real thing, especially when it comes to actual workflow. Real project's aren't straightforward and there are often internal debates and changing ideas while in the middle of working.

As for knowing the subject, I've been a professional Rails developer since Rails was released. The Rails API is huge and the number of variations in versions a professional might have to work with is GIANT. For instance, did you know that there are actually four completely different versions of how Routing works in Rails? Each version of the platform has a completely different way to do routing and often times you have to go look up how to do something in each of the different styles. It's utterly impossible to "know" how to do routing in Rails without reference and trial and error... let alone teach these subjects.

Even though clearly you aren't happy with the result, I can say that it was done very consciously and with a lot of work, and I'm sorry if you feel my choices in the course took away from learning about being a professional instead of improving it.

I'm not taking the Rails Development deep dive but other teachers also use the internet when teaching. For example, when learning jQuery the teacher uses the api site for jQuery all the time, because it doesn't matter if you memorize the api it's about knowing how to use it and industry professionals use documentation a lot. This is just my stab at it, thoughts?

In the Database course, the instructor knew the material inside-out, but often took the student to the dev.mysql documentation site to show how to look things up, explain how to interpret the syntax for a command, and show that sometimes even Google is better for quickly finding the syntax of a command in English than the "official" mysql website.

Knowing how to find answers (and use the information, too) are crucial skills to have.

I haven't completed the Active Record course (need to finish Ruby and Rails, but took a peek), but found the instructor to be engaging. Looking up information instead of spoon feeding everything makes for a more interactive, immersive experience.

Whaat, I am only on the first video, and I am already loving the teaching style. It's very Khan-Academy-esque, meaning, the workflow seems natural, and is much more easy to understand than some videos that are so scripted and rigid that it's almost like I'm listening to a robot speaking.

I came to the forum to remark on the entertainment factor of Hampton Catlin's "script". I just love how he goes "Oh! I didn't think the bundle would be done so fast" or "Oh! It's in Config not db". Aside from the comedic factor, these little things help A LOT. Not only is it more like real life, but also because the rails folders are all so confusing to me still, and that pause really helps me follow along and see how the file structure is organized.

I can agree that the teacher in the Active Record course are a bit hard to follow sometimes but as David Moore says it's good to have a chance to follow his thought process and how he debugs a error. When it comes to checking the guides and the api documentation that is something that i have seen almost every Rails developer do all the time even if they have been working with rails for years. There is no way that you can remember all of that all the time.. what you are seeing are how developers work everywhere.