Gregg Pollack is the face and Founder of Envy Labs, a web development crew based in Orlando, Florida.
Envy Labs not only practice what they preach for making things work, they also encourage others to practice what they preach in the way of Codeschool, the software development learning side of the business which has been built up from scratch alongside web development consulting, providing various online courses for Ruby on Rails, Javascript, HTML and iOS.
Gregg kicks ass in some of the learning videos, notably Rails for Zombies with beautifully formatted tutorials and tests which are easy to follow. Gregg’s tutorial delivery with Codeschool videos also guarantee courses which are personable and fun with the motto ‘Learn by doing’. This is where a sparkling illusion exists with Envy Labs. Glancing at some of the work undertaken to date indicates that they also have the growl of a heavyweight web development consultancy. They have already solved problems for Google, Github and Cisco whilst guarding a cheerful chariot and a flat hierarchy, Gregg included.
Codeschool is suited both for experienced developers approaching new languages as well as beginners. It avoids having to set up an environment in order to get to grips with syntax push code for various concepts in different languages. The video tutorials are followed by challenges which reward points and badges for successful completion and if you get stuck, Codeschool gives you hints, although you get penalised points for answering questions when you are given hints. A better way to answer the questions is to skip back on lectures if you are unsure about anything. Also, Codeschool are very meticulous about updating videos and courses and the videos feature regular improvements and updates to advance the learning experience.
With learning Ruby, Codeschool starts right from the beginning. That is, if you have never learnt any Ruby before there is a precursor to Rails for Zombies called TryRuby which allows you to get used to basic Ruby syntax. TryRuby and Rails for Zombies are both free and cover all the basics in Rails from Create, Read, Update and Destroy, ActiveRecord Models, linking, controllers and how to direct requests. More advanced courses include Rails 4 patterns for building complex Rails applications and Surviving APIs with Rails as well as a separate Testing with RSpec course (complete with funny rap!)
Javascript Road Trip part 1 which is the basic js course and a basic jQuery course comprise the free courses for js technologies which also include two Backbone courses, Node for real-time applications, CoffeeScript and Ember.js with an Angular.js course in the pipeline. The Javascript series tend to give a little less in the way of clues for challenges than the Rails series, all good for encouraging free thought with a couple of different Professors to learn from in addition to Gregg. The User Experience for the Javascript courses in particular is excellent which proves once again that Envy practice what they preach.
Things turn into a teaching frenzy for the front end with an awesome team of developers presenting the HTML/CSS series starting with an orientation course for the fundamentals of CSS called CSS Cross Country which includes pseudo classes and pseudo elements before going on to split courses for HTML5. The series also has three modules on design by Tim Dikun which explore colour, typography and layout.
