Currently I am learning Ruby on Rails. And Michael Hartl's tutorial is the best source out there. Next comes Codeschool's rails for zombies. The key point lies

Currently I am learning Ruby on Rails. And Michael Hartl's tutorial is the best source out there. Next comes Codeschool's rails for zombies. The key point lies here is how you make the tutorial interesting so that the user does not loose focus or concentration. In other words to make it fun to learn. I believe Codeschool is exactly doing it by making small videos and then asking a set of questions and rewarding points to the user. Codecademy too but without videos. So I would suggest if you are developing some tutorials then integrate as much as activity for users you can. I also agree to some level with joel42. After certain level you do not need tutorials anymore. It is just for beginners. In addition, I think those days of University style teachings are over. Or it will be obsolete soon where the receiver end has to sit down idly for hours to learn and then start doing once the lecture finishes. From evolutionary point of view our brain is not wired(designed) to sit down for hours to learn efficiently as it can not absorb all the information thrown to it in a single try. It works best when learning by doing approach is practiced. By adding small piece after piece or tweaking pieces to the building block. However it is my personal opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.