Original subtitles

Hey folks, Mike and Nicole here with the Pragmatic Studio.

If you want to be effective with Ruby, you must master one of this most powerful features,

blocks.

This course will forever change the way you design your Ruby code.

This is the course I wish I would have had in my early Ruby years.

Back then, I knew how to write a block.

I understood the basic syntax and the style, but it took many years afterwards before

I really learned how to design my own code to take advantage of blocks.

So what I really needed to see was lots of practical examples and use cases of blocks.

That's what this course is all about.

We'll start with basic blocks syntax and style, but this course is about so much more than

curly braces, vertical bars, and whether we use parentheses or not.

We'll quickly move beyond what is a block to actually using blocks by first iterating

through collections.

Our next stop is Ruby's innumerable module, whose methods really showcase the power of

blocks and save you a ton of time and code.

Finally, after honing our skills using blocks with methods in the Ruby Standard Library,

we'll move up to writing our own methods that yield to blocks.

Once we have a solid foundation, in the second half of the course, we'll work through a number

of use cases where blocks elegantly solve common problems.

We'll explore recurring block design patterns such as defining iterators for your own collection

classes, executing a round a block of code, and initializing objects using a block and

managing resources.

By seeing blocks and iterators used in our variety of scenarios, you'll be able to recognize

when and where to use blocks effectively in your own code.

So how exactly are you going to become a master of Ruby blocks?

Well, this course is a combination of short videos and hands-on exercises.

In the videos we teach a particular topic through live coding, so you see exactly how it's

done.

We'll also chat about various approaches and use animations to help deepen your understanding.

Then after watching a video, it's your turn to apply what you learned by completing the

hands-on exercises in the companion online workbook.

Don't worry, the exercises aren't just a repeat of what we did in the video.

Rather, you apply the same concepts to solve different problems.

Folks tell us they love this video plus exercise combo because it's more engaging.

You also get a handy set of PDF cheat sheets that summarize all this syntax, concepts,

and techniques taught in the course.

So let's jump right into it.

The first exercise will guide you through how to get your computer set up so we can start

doing some coding.

Then come on back and we'll write our very first block.