Thoughtbot's Upcase for sharpening programming skills

Introduction

Things have been a bit more quiet around here than I’d like. I’ve got my reasons though, I swear. See, I recently subscribed to Thoughtbot’s Upcase. Upcase is a subscription-based service for training developers using their standards of vim, pragmatic TDD and object-oriented design. With a subscription to Upcase, you gain access to the Upcase app repository, tons of videos and several books that I’m finding to be invaluable to my studies as a developer. It’s a great way to learn how one of the most well-known and respected Rails companies tests, develops, and just conducts themselves in general. I’ve been nerding out watching videos related to refactoring, improving vim speed, learning the Law of Demeter, and more. There are also exercises, which is probably the best part. The exercises are real-world projects that range from cleaning up controllers to creating page objects to handle different page interactions. After solving the problem, you push the solution to their servers and get the opportunity to have your code reviewed by members of the Thoughtbot crew. This is especially helpful if (like me) you aren’t in a city that has a particularly budding developer community. I’ll stop waxing poetic about my new toy, and urge you to check out Upcase today!