From: Gawnsoft <xlucid@...>
Date: 2004-08-17T01:16:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as a first language

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:08:30 +0900, James Britt
<jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote (more or less):

>Martin DeMello wrote:
>> What are some of the 'fun' things someone just getting into programming
>> (as a hobby) could do with Ruby?
>
>
>Well, packaging systems seem to bring smiles to everyone around ....
>
>
>:)
>
>
>
>No, seriously, I've written a number of simple scripts to fetch web 
>pages.  Usually they just construct a URL based on some command-line 
>input, then make a system call to launch a browser.  I search Google 
>this way, as well as look for stuff on buy.com, check TV listings, read 
>the news, grep/navigate my local wiki, a few other things.

Could I see them please?


>What might make this interesting for a newcomer would be to write a few 
>scripts like these, then see what they have in common, then see if they 
>can extract the common stuff into a class in an external file.  I ended 
>up with a small class to encapsulate browser selection, url 
>construction, and browser launching.
>
>Along the way, one learns how to get parameters from the command line, 
>validate the input, build new strings, do some basic if/then logic, 
>write a simple class, use 'require'.
>
>And one ends up with actually useful tools for daily life.

-- 
Cheers, 
   Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki:  http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk)  http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk