Graceful.Dev Birthday Sale 2022

Hiya folks!

Avdi here, head gardener at Graceful.Dev. It’s my 42nd birthday today, and longtime followers know what that means: the biggest sale of the year! And this year, it’s bigger than ever before.

First, the TL;DR version: use code HAPPY0X2A to wish me happy birthday and get 42% off ANY individually purchasable course[s] OR a monthly or annual Pro membership. And since this is a very special birthday, I’ve decided to do something I don’t do very often: make the discount permanent for subscriptions. That’s right: if you use this discount for a Pro membership, your discounted rate will be locked-in for as long as your subscription stays active.

With the short version out of the way, I want to talk a little about what makes this birthday so special.

First off, I’m turning 42! That’s an auspicious number. And while I’m not sure I have any ultimate answers, I can certainly say the questions have only become more interesting with time. I hope you’ll raise a pan-galactic gargle blaster with me today!

Second, RubyTapas—the screencast series that morphed into Graceful.Dev—is ten years old today! Which calls for a special celebration. And that brings me to the third thing that makes this birthday special…

Graceful.Dev now offers over two-dozen new courses. No, you did not read that wrong. Since the start of the year, we’ve gone from a handful of courses… to (at last count) thirty-six.

How is this possible? Well, lemme ‘splain with some history. Ten years ago I kicked off RubyTapas with a simple concept: what if programming screencasts were short? I launched a subscription-based show of frequent, tightly-edited, sub-five-minute episodes, each of which sought to introduce one new idea. Beginning with three episodes a week, it eventually settled down to a weekly format.

A decade later, as Graceful.Dev carries forward the legacy of RubyTapas, that library of topical screencasts numbers close to 700 episodes. And because I’ve always preferred to focus on stable language features, best practices, and timeless patterns, 99% of that material is still as current and useful now as when it was first published.

But… that archive was a lot to wade through for newcomers! And only a fraction of it had been extracted and arranged into courses such as Master the Object-Oriented Mindset in Ruby and Rails. While the Graceful.Dev library might well be one of the richest resources available for deepening and growing your coding practice (particularly for Ruby developers), it had become unapproachable.

So this Spring I decided that the best way to celebrate the upcoming anniversary was to finally complete a project I’ve been dreaming of for years: the total course-ification of ten years and nearly 700 episodes of content. I created The Garden Paths: each a suggested pathway through a curated selection of topics on a particular theme.

Here are just a few examples of the brand new paths:

• Broaden and deepen your practice, your teamwork, and your career with Practices of a Graceful developer.
• Scintillating Ruby: for graduates of Flawless Ruby, a deeper dive into Ruby’s core syntax and semantics.
• Investigative Debugging: a course on using advanced surveillance tools to peer deeply into what programs are up to.
• Collected Ruby: a master class in working with Ruby’s collection classes and the Enumerable API.
• Rummage through The Graceful Toolshed to level-up your development environment.
• Rigorous Ruby: learn how to write tests strategically, effectively, and pragmatically.
• Learn to apply proven patterns of enterprise application with Domain Modeling in Ruby.

There are many, many more. Some of the more mature paths are available for individual purchase. Others are only available to Pro members.

These paths are more than just quick-and-dirty categorizations. To build them I reviewed hundreds of videos and scripts in order to make sure each one ended up in the right path, in an order that makes sense. Each path has a freshly written intro, and each is broken down further into thematic modules.

The paths are categorized on their maturity as well, to give you an idea of which ones are considered fleshed-out courses of study, and which are still germinating. Finally, the garden paths are themselves arranged into Garden Tours. If you’re not sure where to start or what course to take next, these tours can help orient you!

Taking time to “put the house in order” in this way sets the stage for a flowering of new content at Graceful.Dev. If you’ve never taken a look at Graceful.Dev before, I hope this news prompts you to check out the garden we’re tending and growing. If you’ve looked at RubyTapas or Graceful.Dev in the past but haven’t been back recently… well, it’s a whole new experience now and I hope you’ll come [re]join us. This garden is flowering and I can’t wait to share the fruits with you.

And remember: this week only, starting on July 5th 2022, you can lock-in 42% off the usual $25/mo or $250/yr. Or if you prefer, you can use the discount to purchase courses individually. The coupon code for this deal is: HAPPY0X2A

(Oh and if you can’t afford the membership even with the discounted rate, due to exchange rates, hardship, etc., our pay-with-a-postcard option is available as always!)

Thanks for reading this far, thanks for helping celebrate my birthday, and stay graceful!

— Avdi