From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2008-03-24T23:23:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Beginner's question

On Mar 24, 2008, at 9:05 AM, Peter Johnsson wrote:

> This question may be a bit too "simple" for this forum which seems to
> target intermediate and advanced users, but if that's the case someone
> could perhaps direct me to a place which is better for asking this
> question?

We welcome all questions.

> bottles = 99
>
> while bottles != 0
> # Need help here.
> end

You are doing just fine here.  Great start.

The most important thing is to try to move in very small steps.  Try  
to add just one more little thing to your code, then another thing,  
and another.  Each time moving closer to what you really want.  That's  
how programmers manage the complexity of tackling big problems we  
can't keep all in our head at one time.

So, for a next step, can you just getting it printing the song lyrics  
inside the loop?  They don't need to reflect the decreasing bottle  
count yet, just get it printing something 99 times.  Of course, to do  
that, you will need to reduce the bottle variable each time so it  
eventually hits zero and cancels the loop.  Given that, you need to  
add one or more puts() statements to handle the printing and a line  
that does some math on the bottles variable.

Is that enough of a hint?  If not, come back and I'll show you some  
code.

Good luck and welcome to Ruby!

James Edward Gray II