The Pragmatic Studio is an acclaimed source of software developer training. We're here because we want to help software developers continually improve their skills and their lives. We do this by offering hands-on public and private training courses, and working with authors of The Pragmatic Bookshelf books to create courses that are both timely and relevant.

Our courses are unique because they're taught by programmers who are well-known experts in their field. Equally important, our instructors know how to clearly and effectively teach what they know. We're a small company without a lot of distractions or overhead. That means we can focus on what's important to us: quality instruction, well-organized events, exceptional customer service, and building long-term relationships with our students.

Simply put, by attending a Studio you'll get the most up-to-date and authoritative developer training around!

How It Started

Mike and Nicole Clark

Mike and Nicole Clark started The Pragmatic Studio in 2005 by offering the first-ever Ruby on Rails training. Back then, folks were just getting into Rails and many were looking to make a career change. Dave Thomas and Mike Clark had written the Rails book, and thought it would be fun to teach in a setting where they could work with students one-on-one. So we announced a public, open-enrollment class. We figured we might be able to teach a couple classes if the first one went well...

Since then we've put on over 75 public classes and have taught just as many private classes at a variety of companies around the world. The Pragmatic Studio has grown into not only a full-time business for us, but also a supportive, friendly community of over 2,500 alumni. Those folks have gone on to create some amazing applications, find new career opportunities, and become leaders in their community. And that's what this is all about to us: helping developers succeed!

Our Instructors

Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas has been writing software since the mid '70s, and hopes one day to get it right. In the meantime, he's the co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer, Programming Ruby, and Agile Web Development with Rails. Along with Andy Hunt, they run The Pragmatic Programmers.

Chad Fowler

Chad Fowler is a well-known author and Ruby and Rails trainer and consultant. He is cofounder of Ruby Central, a non-profit corporation responsible for the annual International Ruby and Rails Conferences, and is a leading contributor and frequent speaker in the communities. Chad is the author of Rails Recipes and The Passionate Programmer, a contributor to Programming Ruby, and VP Engineering at LivingSocial.

Daniel Steinberg

Daniel Steinberg is the author of Cocoa Programming: A Quick Start for Developers and iPad Programming. He writes feature articles for Apple's ADC web site and is a regular contributor to Mac Devcenter. He has presented at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, MacWorld, MacHack, and other Mac developer conferences.

Matt Drance

Matt Drance is the owner of Bookhouse Software, an iPhone and iPad app development company, co-author of iOS Recipes, and an eight-year Apple veteran. As Apple's Application Frameworks Evangelist, Matt helped shape the APIs in the iPhone SDK and worked with hundreds of third-party developers to build many of the apps you use today. He was an annual speaker at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and iPhone Tech Talks, and his orientation videos in the iPhone Dev Center have been viewed by thousands of iPhone developers. At Bookhouse, Matt now builds his own products and works regularly with a number of clients.

Bill Dudney

Bill Dudney is a software developer and entrepreneur currently building software for iOS and Mac OS X. He's a co-author of iOS SDK Development and Core Animation for Mac OS X and the iPhone. Prior to teaching, Bill worked at Apple as the Application Frameworks Evangelist where he helped many developers with good apps build great apps. He has several iPhone apps currently selling on the App Store.

Jim Weirich

Jim Weirich has been active in the software development world for over twenty-five years. Jim is very active in the Ruby community and has contributed to several Ruby projects including the Rake build system, the FlexMock mocking library, and the RubyGems package management software. Jim is the Chief Scientist for EdgeCase, LLC.

Joe O'Brien

Joe O'Brien has spent his career as a developer, project manager, and everything in between. Before helping found EdgeCase, LLC, Joe was a developer with ThoughtWorks and spent much of his time working with large J2EE and .NET systems for Fortune 500 companies. He also co-founded the Columbus Ruby Brigade and helped organize the Chicago Area Ruby Users Group.

Corey Haines

Corey Haines is an independent consultant and best known as the founder of Code Retreat. After 12 years of coding for money, three years ago he gave up the security of a paycheck and went on a year-long, journeyman tour of software teams. Traveling the world, he spent his time pair-programming, teaching, and sharing what he's learned about software craftsmanship. For the past three years he's been focused on helping developers improve their fundamental software design skills through facilitating more than 20 code retreats. He's been using Ruby and Rails since 2008, and he's the co-creator of MercuryApp.

Mike Clark

Mike Clark is the co-owner of The Pragmatic Studio, and also an accomplished Rails and iOS developer, author, and trainer. He started teaching the original Rails Studio with Dave Thomas way back in 2005. He's the author of Advanced Rails Recipes, co-author of Agile Web Development with Rails, and author of Pragmatic Project Automation. You can check out his latest endeavors on his blog.