From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2006-09-21T23:06:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Request for code review of beginning project

On Sep 21, 2006, at 2:55 AM, Ben Schaffhausen wrote:

> Hello,

Hello and welcome to Ruby.

> To start I am making a few classes to model the buildings and delivery
> or materials to and from other buildings. Currently the program is  
> ~250
> lines long and seems to work within my intentions thus far.

"seems to work" is a good sign that you might enjoy learning a little  
about unit testing.  You could build tests to to ensure that it is  
indeed working as you expect and give you peace of mind as the code  
grows.

> Still I can't help but feel that the code is messy or that I'm doing
> things the hard way/non-ruby-way.

I really didn't see any big red flags in the code.  Mostly you are  
assigning to or making minor adjustments to variables.  There's not a  
lot for us to improve on for something like that.

Some general tips:

*  Drop the parens around if( ..) lines.  Ruby doesn't need them.
*  Try to use indices as little as possible.  They are generally un- 
Rubyish.  Here's an example targeting your queue:

 >> # with indices...
?> @q = [ ["Beads", "Denver", "Oklahoma City"],
?>        ["Keyboards", "New Haven", "Chicago"] ]
=> [["Beads", "Denver", "Oklahoma City"], ["Keyboards", "New Haven",  
"Chicago"]]
 >> # show what is going to where
?> @q.each { |item| puts "#{item[0]} to #{item[2]}" }
Beads to Oklahoma City
Keyboards to Chicago
=> [["Beads", "Denver", "Oklahoma City"], ["Keyboards", "New Haven",  
"Chicago"]]
 >> # without indices...
?> Shippment = Struct.new(:product, :origin, :destination)
=> Shippment
 >> @q = [ Shippment.new("Beads", "Denver", "Oklahoma City"),
?>        Shippment.new("Keyboards", "New Haven", "Chicago") ]
=> [#<struct Shippment product="Beads", origin="Denver",  
destination="Oklahoma City">, #<struct Shippment product="Keyboards",  
origin="New Haven", destination="Chicago">]
 >> # show what is going to where
?> @q.each { |ship| puts "#{ship.product} to #{ship.destination}" }
Beads to Oklahoma City
Keyboards to Chicago
=> [#<struct Shippment product="Beads", origin="Denver",  
destination="Oklahoma City">, #<struct Shippment product="Keyboards",  
origin="New Haven", destination="Chicago">]

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II