I’m very disappointed with the Exercises too, as getting code reviews was the main reason I signed up for Learn
I hear you. The current lag time before people get reviews is not acceptable to me, and we’re going to fix it.
Also, I just reviewed your Tell, Don’t Ask solution. Nice work!
Thanks @benorenstein! It’ll be interesting to see if adding more guidance and background detail to each exercise will increase the number of submissions.
Happy to help!
Can you clarify what you mean about background and guidance? I just want to make sure I understand.
For instance: on the Tell Don’t Ask exercise, you’d like to see us talk more about the principle?
With the current plans, yes, you’d lose access to the source code and exercises (and ebook updates, though you’d obviously still have the pdfs you downloaded/repos you cloned).
However, I’m not very happy with this. I dislike that you’d be paying more but losing features. Granted, you’d gain access to the video tutorials/workshops, which are super great, but it still feels suboptimal.
For now, my answer is that if you want to get workshops and retain access to exercises/ebook/source you’d need to go to the $99 plan. However, I’m going to kick this around in my head and see if there’s something we can do.
Take the latest Page Object for example. It simply links to a blog post about it. It doesn’t really explain why it’s a good idea or to be careful with its usage because we can get carried away with applying new techniques to clean up tests only to end up making things harder to understand. I feel the Cleaning up a controller one was kind of left a bit too open for people to implement their own ideas! Maybe that’s why there were so few submissions to that one. Some tips and advice such as avoiding God objects would be good as these sorts of refactorings can lead to making the code worse if we’re not careful.
Thanks for expanding. You’ve got a great point and I’ll share that feedback with the team.
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I feel that Thoughtbot stands to learn a lot from competitors like Lynda and Code School. In both cases you are guided through concepts in a highly structured and incremental approach. Additionally the price point is much better. Thoughtbot seems to have the potential to clearly define the standard on Ruby on Rails and Ruby online education. But for my money I would prefer a little more direction then what’s provided. I’m not new to Ruby, Rails, Javascript or programming for that matter. I find the intermediate and advanced topics available on Thoughtbot very compelling. I just think that the execution stands to improve. I am unlikely to commit to $100 per month for what is currently available. I’m eager to see the materials evolve into more of a curriculum.
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I’m a bit bummed out as well about the new prices. I started with $29 and upgraded to $99 for the TDD and Intermediate rails workshops, but now since I’ve completed those and don’t need the other workshops I was planning to return to the $29 plan.
Now if I switch my plan back to $29 I lose out on a lot of features…I have to pay $49 for the same stuff I had before. It would have been better if I simply stayed at the $29 plan and didn’t upgrade, since then I’d be grandfathered in… It’s not a good feeling to regret upgrading, and I don’t really see an alternative to canceling after this month is up.
@benorenstein - how about offering everyone who was grandfathered in one chance to change their plan, at the old rates? Then people like @tehfailsafe could go back to $29 and keep all the old features of that plan. The new plans did come out of the blue. You’d probably have a lot of happy customers if you gave them a one-off chance to change.
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I get the numbers approach to changing the pricing. However, the lifetime value is calculated purely on $ and ignores the community value those 100+ sign ups per month will drive for learn.thoughtbot.com.
This was a great way for me to incrementally get to be a better Ruby programmer. I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this outside of a career and family, so I was never in your target demographic. As a potential student I’d compare the rates directly to Lynda.com (rates). (And yes, Lynda doesn’t go deep in Ruby and Rails the way you do, but in the bigger scheme of things…)
You’re running a business, not a non-profit school, so this makes sense economically. Just not for the part time learner like me.
Good luck and track those participation numbers in the forum!
I am new and considering signing up the price does seem a little steep but it looks like at the $99 level it is a lot of training - I am not sure the personal coach makes sense - the price difference is about $150 and the only difference I can see is 30 minutes of personal coach time a month
Why not just have the $99 plan and then have an option to schedule personal time for a fee?
This would make more sense for me
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That actually would be a cool idea. I second that idea. I bet it would get quite a bit of use. Then you could purchase hours of mentoring per month if you needed it.
I totally agree with this.
I think our content is some of the best out there, but we could definitely do a better job of organizing it into a cohesive curriculum. This is going to be a focus in the coming weeks.
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Consensus seems to be that this forum will be better if we give access to it at all plan levels.
I agree, and we’re going to make this change shortly.
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I just canceled my $29 subscription and wanted to make a new post called “Cheaper plan, less features” before I lose my access to the forum. Seems I can post my 2 cents here instead of starting a new thread.
Since I’m already working as a Ruby on Rails developer and have some sparetime projects I feel like I don’t have as much time to work on the Excersises. But I really like to browse the forum and watch the Weekly Iteration. I just feel it’s not worth $29 for me. As some other people already suggest some kind of Railscasts system would be greatly appreciated. I’m not sure about the pricing but I think I would pay something like $15 for forum access and access to the Weekly Iteration.
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Are workshops now only available on the most expensive plan? It’s not very clear from the pricing page. I’m on the Aspiring Professional plan but still paying the old rate. I have access to the video tutorials but not the workshops.
Sorry. I agree it’s not totally clear what’s going on in the pricing page. That’s mostly because we’re being inconsistent, using “workshops” and “video tutorials” interchangeably.
Aspiring Professional ($99) and Part-time study ($49) both include access to workshops.
@andyw8 You are on a legacy Prime Basic plan ($29/month). That plan does not include access to the workshops.
Hello everyone!
I wanted to add a relevant update to this old thread, that we’ve dramatically decreased prices on Upcase, and that we are fully moving to a new $29/month price.
We are committed to this new pricing strategy, and therefore we’re moving all existing customers at the $99 or $49/month levels to the $29/month plan, effective immediately. If you are a current Upcase member, you will receive all the features today, and your next regularly scheduled bill will be for $29.
If you were at the lower-featured, $29/month plan, we moved you to the new full-featured $29/month plan a few weeks ago.
If you’re on a yearly plan, we’ve moved you to the new price and applied the remaining balance on your year to the new price.
You can read the full announcement on our blog:
Thank you all for subscribing and sticking with us. We are committed to making Upcase even better, and we very much appreciate you being a member!
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I certainly don’t know your numbers, but when I tell one of the many junior devs I work with to “Sign up for Upcase,” $29 per month is much, much more palatable than $99. Hopefully you’ll get the volume to make everything work. Upcase forums have replaced Stack Overflow for me for instance – much better SvN ratios here.
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