From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-11-20T06:54:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Small practice programs

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

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