I wanted to give you a heads-up about something, and also to get your feedback.
We want Upcase to be perfect for turning intermediate-level Rails developers into highly-employable badasses that write great code. Our ideal members are likely recent bootcamp grads, currently-employed junior developers, or self-taught folks trying to land their first job.
We explicitly want to stay out of the newbie market. It’s not our strong-suit, and there are lots of good resources that cover the basics of Ruby and Rails already.
Additionally, we think our strength lies in sharing the lessons and best practices we’ve learned by developing hundreds of applications for our clients. We’d like to publish this sort of information, rather than simple introductions to various tools that anyone could produce.
With that in mind, we took a look at our existing trails and decided that some should be retired. A few fall too far outside our main focus (like Haskell Monads), and a few are too basic (like Rails Fundamentals).
Refining focus is great and I can see how this is a good step in that direction.
I was happy with having Haskell, iOS and Ember stuff, but to be honest that was just a good excuse to play with those things. If they give way to more dedicated, in-depth Ruby content, I can’t see that as a loss.
I think I’ve replied elsewhere that the level of discussion on the Weekly Iteration is exactly what I want from Upcase: I usually show people the Functional VS OO Ruby episode as a sample and has never failed to convince them to signup. Anything that makes more room for that content gets a from me
I like that Upcase is focused on intermediate+ content. It’s what I’m looking for, and staying in that zone means you guys will continue to produce quality content only at the intermediate+ level rather than being distracted by more beginner and other extraneous material.
However, seeing as this is material you guys have already taken the time to produce, is there any way it could stay online longer than the given date? I’d love to take a look at some of these and was especially looking forward to hitting up Ember and Bourbon when I signed up, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to get to them before 9/1.
I totally support on focusing intermediate-level+. What’s great about Upcase is people to learn more on best practices, experiences, and guideline from thoughtboter to be better developers. I would like to see some performances and scaling contents from practical experiences as well.
I’m good with this decision. I past the newbie status for a while now and I’m looking out mostly for best practices, getting better at writing Ruby, refactoring, using tools like Tmux and Vim. As I’m starting shortly with a collegue on a team project, I would love to see some best practices for using Git, especially in the context of a team.
I will not miss Haskell Monads at all, though I would not retire the Bourbon trail, as it is the only learning resource on Thoughtbot’s major front end tooling.
I’d like to see more iOS Trails. More, more advanced, updated. Haskell is of a large interest of mine, but between iOS/Swift/Objective-C and Ruby, Rails I don’t need another technology to try and master at the moment. Maybe some trails that are more advanced that combine common pairings used in the real world like iOS + Rails API.
I really do understand the desire, perhaps even need, to refocus. For me honestly though the non Ruby/Rails stuff is what I’ve appreciated most, and what has kept me subscribed. Maybe I’m not the target audience though since you did say that you were looking at intermediate Ruby/Rails folks and I moved past that a while back.
I’m all for the direction on new content but it seems like a waste to simply remove the existing tracks. I too would like to hit up the Bourbon and Ember courses at some point.
+1 to Khundawg’s comment about it seeming silly to remove content that’s already out there. Could we get a “junk drawer” section with content that’s explicitly retired/unsupported but still available? Even content aimed at aging versions is nice to have for reference.
More Ruby/Rails deep-dives could be nice though - looking forward to those as well!
Same feeling here, I don’t know nothing about Haskell or iOS development and I would like to learn some even if my main focus is on front end and rails development. It’s nice to have a place to learn new stuff with the quality that upcase provide.
I have learned so much from the iOS and Bourbon trails. They were great. I want to go through some of the others on that retired list also. I think keeping these around after 9/1 is a good idea. After all, doesn’t learning other languages help us be better developers?
There are other learning resources out there. However, I think Learn presents a unique learning methodology. Of all the learning services I have tried (and thats a lot) I have enjoyed and developed more from Learn.
I understand and am excited about a more specific focus on Rails. Onward.
I agree with everyone about keeping the trails around if possible in a retired section. I’m shedding my newbieness and found the rails trails to be excellent. Even if thats not who you want to cater to going forward. I was looking forward to doing the bourbon trails soon!
I’ll +1 everyone’s thoughts on 1) liking the renewed focus on intermediate+ Ruby/Rails content and 2) keeping around existing content if possible even if only to current subscribers or not on the dashboard. One question – can you give us some example of what all this content will be replaced with? As it stands now, I just logged in to see roughly half of the trails gone.
Overall though, keep up the good work. Upcase has been a really good resource for me, as I’m C#/JS developer who is loving delving deeper into Ruby. Most of the newbie resources out there on RoR assume no prior dev experience, so Upcase has been perfect for me.
I love the renewed focus as I believe that is one thing that has been lacking in recent months. Upcase, and all of your other products (books, podcasts, etc), have helped me tremendously over the last few years. If you can start pumping out more intermediate+ content that’s exactly what I need to develop further as a developer.
I honestly think some of those should stay. And instead you should make them more focused on how they apply to Rails. Example being Ember. Ember and React are used quite a bit within rails and showing how they’re used in rails is nothing but a net win. The tracks don’t have to be super in depth but honestly I think starting to integrate front end technologies is definitely something an intermediate developer would be looking into adding into their skill sets in order to either land a job as a ruby developer or remove the Jr. from their title (which is the goal of Upcase).
I agree with others that feel these should remain as an aside to the focus, not be removed completely. However if some of the content has fallen behind the current state then I’m all for having it nuked if updating it is out of the question.
from me 
