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Status: [IN PROGRESS] About 60% complete. Last Update: August 23, 2016 Product URL: Red:4 Video Price: $25 Perspective at review time: Elixir Beginner
This review is for the Red:4 video product. There is also a book.
So I'm brand-spanking-new to Elixir and I want to get learning. Right away I looked for great learning sources in various types (docs, books, videos, etc). My journey quickly led me to the Red:4 video. I enjoyed the preview video and figured why not.
The video is about 3 hours in length and covers a good bit for a beginner. If you've programmed in another language, I think you'll follow along just fine. For those who have never programmed, you may have a little difficulty. For example, you're told about lists, structs and so forth in a manner consistent with teaching someone who has programmed and is most likely familiar with such things (at least enough to know they are a thing).
Another nice thing about the video is the ability to download it (about 864 megs). I'm slightly tired of paying money for things I can only steam and only as long as I'm a paying member (yes, I'm aware I can get around this). I like when services offer ALL users the ability to download their content.
As you'll see, from a beginners perspective, the first half of video is covering some very basic concepts in Elixir. It doesn't try to go from, "Hi, I'm Elixir" to "Let's code Bleacher Report" in 3 hours. That would be foolish.
GITHUB
I liked that the code used in the video is available on GitHub, so if you get lost, it's easy to get up to speed. It's always nice to have code to grab in case you get out of sync or just want to jump into the coding at a certain point.
Main Segments
Here are the main segments of the video.
... coming soon.
Overall Thoughts
If you're someone who spends money on training and are a complete newbie to Elixir, I recommend you check out this video. I really enjoyed it a lot. I felt that this video combined with my reading of Programming in Elixir 1.3 really helped me solidify some basics fast.
I also liked how we were building something as we learned. Sometimes you'll be learning something and then have that "now what?" moment when you go to try and actually build something other than a "Hello, World!" app. It's really helpful to me to see how another developer is setting up his or her project and to see how all the little pieces are being put together. Best practices? Not sure, but initially it isn't as important as being able to actually get the ball rolling.
Everyone has their own system for valuing content, but for me it was well worth the $25. As a point of reference, I'm a developer who allocates a fair amount of money monthly for training and learning goodies (usually have running subs to PluralSight, Egghead.io, Frontend Masters, etc), so take that for what it's worth.