From: Tom Armitage <tom.armitage@...>
Date: 2006-10-03T00:34:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie - Source Code Study, Projects

Another good type of project I found useful to learn from is to build
things with public web APIs for services you maybe already use. There
are various RSS and XML parsers for Ruby, and lots of interesting
public APIs kicking around.

One of the first I wrote was pretty simple - a command-line tool that
takes a zip code as input, and gives you the current weather at that
location, using the Yahoo! Weather API (I think, in fact, this came
from a Ruby Quiz, now I remember :) ). So try something like that, or
maybe a tool to spit out your last ten delicious bookmarks, or what
you've got on Upcoming in the next ten months.

The "tricky" part is learning how to access the API and parse the
input; you'll get to know REXML and Net:HTTP (or open-uri) quite well
doing this. You get a nice interactive tool, but don't have to futz
around with Tk or other GUI tools.

I've always found this kind of work satisfying because it solves a
(roughly) real problem withuot spending too much time being distracted
by shaving yaks. And it's not hard at all - lots of documentation out
there to help you achieve it; this kind of thing is very popular these
days.

So that might be an idea.

t.

On 02/10/06, James H. <james.herdman@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Ruby Quiz page is always a good read -- http://www.rubyquiz.com/
> It probably would be a good idea to try a few of these as a project, of
> sorts.  I can't think of any projects off of the top of my head that
> would be fun or good to do.  That said, if you come up with an idea,
> try it.  It can't hurt.
>
> Aside from that, I'm not really sure.  If you use a library you enjoy,
> take a look at it's source code.
>
> I hope this helps a little, and I'm sure you'll enjoy Ruby.  It's quite
> fun =)
>
> James H.
>
> woodyee wrote:
> > Hi! I'm a newbie to Ruby and programming. Can anyone recommend any
> > online sources that has Ruby source code available for study? Also, can
> > anyone suggest some projects that I can create in Ruby (newbie level)?
> > I'm completing Chris Pine's Learning to Program book and will start the
> > Pickaxe book next. Thanks so much!
>
>
>