I have been a fan of the Pragmatic Programmer series of publications ever since the book that started it all by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer. 

Since then, the Pragmatic bookshelf has built quite a stable of valuable content in both print and digital (PDF) format.  With the rise of screencast products available on the web and from established publishers like Addison-Wesley with their Live Lessons series, specific language pay-to-view products like the Peepcode's Ruby on Rails series and a variety of capture demonstrations posted to services like Showmedo and YouTube, it's no surprise that the Pragmatic team have stepped up to the plate to pitch their interpretation while trying to monetize the planning, production and distribution effort required to delivery a quality end product.

Doing screencasts are not easy, especially for people who are more comfortable in front of a keyboard instead of a camera.  A lot of pre-planning, script creation, frequent retakes, audio/video editing, flow analysis and, if the product is intended for a paying audience, editorial review for presentation, fact verification and ultimately educational and/or entertainment value assurance are some of the many steps required to sell a product people would consider purchasing.  To compound the matter, video tutorials are a niche product and require an audience willing to patiently and intensely watch a one-way demonstration that might only be viewed once or twice if the material is especially dense.  Given those obstacles and the high value expectations of consumers, Pragmatic has delivered a commendable series under the Pragmatic Screencasts umbrella.  

The specific screencast set I opted to review is Kevin Smith's Erlang by Example.  Erlang has garnered attention as a result of its native support for multi-core architectures.  I personally have never programmed using the language but knew of its use in our industry and read a handful of articles, blog posts, podcasts and even thumbed through a few Erlang books to try to understand what all the excitement was about.  Having not been bitten by the Erlang bug, I thought Kevin's screencast would have the best shot of enthusing me to pursue the language further.  So did it achieve this objective?  Partially.

First, Kevin's 3-part series is *not* an introduction to the language and assumes the viewer(s) have already installed, ran and even written a few Erlang apps themselves.  Once the brief Pragmatic Screencasts bookend leader fades out, Kevin jumps right in with an overview of an Erlang example designed to demonstrate messaging via a simple client/server chat program.  The remaining 90 minutes of the program walk through the process of coding the application, learning how several of Erlang's unique and, to the uninitiated, obtuse features work in the process.  Throughout the series, I felt as if I were peer programming on my first day at the job with a seasoned veteran.  While I didn't have a compelling reason to start writing Erlang-based systems upon the conclusion of the series, I did expect at least one more viewing of the material if I ever did have the opportunity to pursue an Erlang approach in a future project.

Quality-wise, the recordings are captured in clear 800x600 resolution and high fidelity 44 kHz 16-bit audio and are unencumbered by DRM.  As such, I watched the first of this three part series on my laptop, converted the second episode's .mov (Pragmatic offers the choice of a Quicktime .mov or video iPod-optimized .mp4 file downloads) to an .m4v to watch on my AppleTV and converted the third to an .avi to watch on my Pocket PC.  The laptop screen experience was by far the easiest to watch due to the resolution clarity combined with the fact that I could play it unobtrusively in a corner while taking notes or responding to an occasional email or IM.  The presentation was recorded on an OSX desktop using, I suspect, a screen recorder like iShowU, as the clarity of the code windows are especially sharp.

Costing five US dollars per episode, the entire series download is equivalent to the cost of a typical movie DVD.  Given the unencumbered format, one could even convert the downloaded files into a DVD-compatible mpeg2 format and watch the episodes from a DVD player.  Considering the higher cost of Pragmatic's competitors video training products, this is a very reasonable price for the quantity and quality of content delivered.

In addition to the Erlang series, Pragmatic currently offers a few other screencasts and is actively seeking experts to add to their screencast library and advertising on their screencast FAQ, a 50% royalty payment for the authors.  This incentive should help Pragmatic quickly amass a considerable variety of screencasts in a short amount of time.

In summary, I found the quality, price and general value of Pragmatic's screencasts to meet or even exceed my expectations and I recommend both programming content producers and consumers alike take a closer look at what the Pragmatic Screencasts have to offer.  

For more information, visit http://pragprog.com/screencasts.