# Newbie - Source Code Study, Projects **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [October 2, 2006, 4:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747 "2006-10-02T16:31:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 4:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/1 "2006-10-02T16:31:07Z")
Hi! I’m a newbie to Ruby and programming. Can anyone recommend any online sources that has Ruby source code available for study? Also, can anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)? I’m completing Chris P.'s Learning to Program book and will start the Pickaxe book next. Thanks so much! ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/2 "2006-10-02T16:49:09Z")
On 10/2/06, woodyee [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hi! I’m a newbie to Ruby and programming. Can anyone recommend any > online sources that has Ruby source code available for study? Also, can > anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)? > I’m completing Chris P.'s Learning to Program book and will start the > Pickaxe book next. Thanks so much! I find projects that give you good and fast feedback are best. Stuff with a GUI component is important too, so your finished efforts have some visual presence that you can show off or feel proud of. Also Ruby has a lot of very powerful APIs for processing network stuff. You might find one that ties into your real world knowledge of stuff like Telnet, IRC, RSS, IM etc. Writing client apps for these kinds of services are good learning points - the protocols are well documented, in many cases the Ruby libraries take care of a lot of the grunt work, and you get exposed to important parts of the language like error handling. If your intention is learning for fun, learn how to make UIs in Ruby. Ruby ships with a UI toolkit called Tk, which is not pretty, but it means that you will appreciate the ‘pretty’ toolkits like Qt better once you master the default. It also means that you can at least consider things like game programming which is always interesting. I have been personally itching to make a sudoku - solver for a while now. If you are learning programming with a different purpose, to impress an employer say, or beef up development skills prior to a career change, you might want to consider more employer-friendly projects like learning Rails, or database work with Ruby. ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/3 "2006-10-02T16:59:11Z")
> Also, can > anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)? I find the Euler project full of fun. It consists of mulitpple small mathematical / programming challenges that typically is solved in about 10 - 20 lines of human readable code. It’s fast in the beginning and hard at the end, take a look and see if the quiz is pleasing. > **[mathschallenge.net](https://mathschallenge.net/index.php?section=project)** > > A website dedicated to the puzzling world of mathematics. ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/4 "2006-10-02T17:07:15Z")
The Ruby Q. page is always a good read – [http://www.rubyquiz.com/](http://www.rubyquiz.com/) It probably would be a good idea to try a few of these as a project, of sorts. I can’t think of any projects off of the top of my head that would be fun or good to do. That said, if you come up with an idea, try it. It can’t hurt. Aside from that, I’m not really sure. If you use a library you enjoy, take a look at it’s source code. I hope this helps a little, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy Ruby. It’s quite fun =) James H. ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/5 "2006-10-02T17:35:19Z")
Another good type of project I found useful to learn from is to build things with public web APIs for services you maybe already use. There are various RSS and XML parsers for Ruby, and lots of interesting public APIs kicking around. One of the first I wrote was pretty simple - a command-line tool that takes a zip code as input, and gives you the current weather at that location, using the Yahoo! Weather API (I think, in fact, this came from a Ruby Q., now I remember 🙂 ). So try something like that, or maybe a tool to spit out your last ten delicious bookmarks, or what you’ve got on Upcoming in the next ten months. The “tricky” part is learning how to access the API and parse the input; you’ll get to know REXML and Net:HTTP (or open-uri) quite well doing this. You get a nice interactive tool, but don’t have to futz around with Tk or other GUI tools. I’ve always found this kind of work satisfying because it solves a (roughly) real problem withuot spending too much time being distracted by shaving yaks. And it’s not hard at all - lots of documentation out there to help you achieve it; this kind of thing is very popular these days. So that might be an idea. t. ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/6 "2006-10-02T19:27:38Z")
On 10/2/06, woodyee [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hi! I’m a newbie to Ruby and programming. Can anyone recommend any > online sources that has Ruby source code available for study? Also, can > anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)? > I’m completing Chris P.'s Learning to Program book and will start the > Pickaxe book next. Thanks so much! Playing with DRb and other network stuff is always fun (well, to me, anyway :). ---
**Author:** ![woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@woodyee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/woodyee)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-source-code-study-projects/70747/7 "2006-10-02T19:53:42Z")
woodyee wrote: > Hi! I’m a newbie to Ruby and programming. Can anyone recommend any > online sources that has Ruby source code available for study? Also, can > anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)? > I’m completing Chris P.'s Learning to Program book and will start the > Pickaxe book next. Thanks so much! try “ruby on rails” and agile “webdevelopment with ruby on rails” (book) hf