From: Randy Kramer <rhkramer@...>
Date: 2006-03-31T04:03:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Black Belt

On Thursday 30 March 2006 10:34 am, Pistos Christou wrote:
> Okay, I went over to this pythonchallenge.com and got to level 3 (using
> irb, hehehe).  It was semi-fun, and I can see how it might appeal to
> some people.
>
> It seems like a lot of work to do anything similar, at least in whole.
> Perhaps whoever is going to do this could start small, and just work up
> over time.

Hmm, I didn't get past Level 1.  (Did I start at the wrong place--you start 
with a cryptic  "Hint: try to change the URL address."?)

Anyway, the idea as I imagined it in my mind sounded good, the actual 
implementation of the idea annoys me, it seems like one of those adventure 
games where you search all over the place until you get lucky and find 
something useful.

Anyway, ignoring all that, I'd be interested in seeing something implemented 
along the lines I imagined--you go to some page where there is a fairly well 
laid out problem to solve (with adequate descriptive text).  There is some 
way for you to provide an answer (either via a code fragment, or maybe some 
(well thought out) multiple choice answers.  If you answer the question 
right, you get credit for a "level" and move to the next challenge.  If you 
answer it wrong, you can either try again (immediately) or seek (and find) 
resources to help you understand what you didn't understand before.

I was hoping that the Python challenge site included a listing of the problem 
they solved at each of the challenge levels, and what they expected the 
challenger to learn as a result--is there such a list?

Anyway (I guess I like that word), although I'm quite busy at the moment, I 
suggest anybody who is interested in this just start--by adding their 
thoughts to this thread, and then moving thoughts somewhere else as they jell 
(sp?).

What makes sense as the first challenge for something like that?  I guess over 
on Python challenge, it has to do with (after changing the URL) to something 
related to 2**38.  And, of course, there is the traditional "Hello, World!" 
program.  Anybody have other suggestions for either the first challenge or 
any subsequent challenges?

(If we don't find anything better, I'd propose to start creating relevant 
pages on WikiLearn (http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Wikilearn).

Randy Kramer

Oh, I have challenge #27 (just guessing at the number)--install Ruby, tcl/tk, 
TkHTML, and whatever else is required to make TkHTML display a simple HTML 
string like <h3>Test page</h3> (with the correct HTML).  (Then do the same 
for wxHTML, kHTML, Gecko, and ???