For someone with some programming background and an interest in
learning Ruby, what are a few good “practice” programs to write?
Brian
On 11/19/05, dark2 [email protected] wrote:
For someone with some programming background and an interest in
learning Ruby, what are a few good “practice” programs to write?
These are great challenges that help build up your skills and also are
a lot of fun 
dark2 wrote:
For someone with some programming background and an interest in
learning Ruby, what are a few good “practice” programs to write?
Do you use a computer on a regular basis? Do you find yourself doing
the same little things over and over, by hand? Write Ruby code to
automate or simply them.
Start small, pick a problem or task that has personal meaning, and
scratch your own itch.
For example, got tired of having to leave the command line to run a
Google search, so I wrote simple script to run my queries from a CMD
prompt. I then extended it to search the TV schedule, and later to go
find stuff at my local library.
I also got tired of having to open up a calender application just to
add a reminder or task, so I wrote a small app to script Outlook.
Once one gets started, one sees endless places to add little tweaks and
features, and learns (ideally) to refactor, simply, learn and practice
new ways to do things in Ruby. I have my own version of ‘find’, for
example, that gives me a menu of the found files, and will launch files
in various applications (again, to avoid leaving the command line.)
As others have (or will) mention, the weekly ruby quizzes are an
interesting source of challenges, but nothing beats self interest for
motivation.
James
–
http://www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
Ruby Code & Style - Ruby Code & Style: Writers wanted
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
http://www.30secondrule.com - Building Better Tools
Is there any site similar to Ruby quiz with some slightly easier
challenges?
You could try the Test First Challenge:
http://groups.google.com/group/Ruby-Test-First-Challenge
It’s kind of like a ruby quiz in slow motion.
I’d also agree with James suggestion to find an itch of
your own to scratch.
-pate
On 11/19/05, dark2 [email protected] wrote:
Is there any site similar to Ruby quiz with some slightly easier
challenges?
Before University of New Haven Ruby Brigade became New Haven Ruby
Brigade, we had a couple challenges. Here is one of them. Don’t read
to the end if you don’t want to see the solutions, but it’s not that
hard… (Read as far as you need to for hints)
http://stonecode.org/organizations/unh.rb/board/viewtopic.php?t=10
There is also a simple challenge on the new_haven.rb mailing list you
might try:
(that no one has solved yet)
http://groups.google.com/group/New-Haven-Ruby-Brigade/browse_thread/thread/02c5820ebc0e73d7
Also, look through the Ruby Q.zes a little deeper. Some are
insanely difficult but others are not quite so tough.
Some of the easier ones are:
-Cows and Bulls
-LCD Numbers
-Whiteout
Of course, reading through the solutions or solving parts of the
quizzes is good for the heart, too. HTH
On 11/20/05, dark2 [email protected] wrote:
Is there any site similar to Ruby quiz with some slightly easier
challenges?
Well, these might be too easy, but I’ll mention them:
There are a number of quizzes in my Ruby tutorial:
http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
Of course, the earlier ones are quite easy (but it wouldn’t hurt to
spend 2 or 3 minutes on some of those). But the later ones are
considerably harder (sorting, deaf grandma, birthday spankings,
orange tree…).
Just in case you find it useful…
Chris
On Nov 19, 2005, at 5:32 PM, dark2 wrote:
Is there any site similar to Ruby quiz with some slightly easier
challenges?
The Ruby Q.zes come in all sizes and difficultly. This week’s,
Euchre Hands, is quite easy. Did you read that one?
James Edward G. II
Although some of these are quite difficult (involving, say, dynamic
programming/optimization techniques), here is a huge inventory of
problems associated with the Programming Challenges:
http://online-judge.uva.es/problemset/
scroll done to the catalogs. There are hundreds of problems. The
downside is, of course, that there are no canoncial ruby solutions.
There is a book for them which you don’t need but does demonstrate
how some of the different kinds of problems might be solved: http://
www.programming-challenges.com/pg.php?page=index
It would be very interesting to see the solutions to these problems
expressed in a rubyiomatic idiom. (I wonder if they could be
convinced to add Ruby as one of the permissible languages? If not
maybe the ruby community could implement their own?)
Cheers,
Steve