From: Samuel Williams <space.ship.traveller@...>
Date: 2010-05-05T12:28:13+09:00
Subject: Re: School teacher still at it learning programming language

Dear Hilary,

If you are new to Ruby I recommend the following page:
	http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/ruby/index

It has links to good beginner tutorials and related information.

I recommend you look at YAML for storing, processing and outputting data. It integrates with Ruby very easily and reduces the complexity of handing data.

Secondly, I recommend you avoid Rails to begin with unless you are specifically after a web based interface. Once you've got your ideas working (i.e. data processing) it is easy to add a web interface. So, for now focus on the data processing.

Thus, I recommend writing a set of shell scripts to process your data and produce results. This is an easy target to begin with and you can improve it from there - i.e. add a GUI or web front end - whatever suits you.

Once you've got your basic processing algorithm in place, I recommend you investigate either Rake or optparse - these both allow you to make more complex shell scripts with options and configuration - for example:

With optparse:
$ ./process_data.rb --districts a,b,c --method=average --ignore-subjects=science

With rake:

$ rake process_districts[a b c]

You will likely end up refactoring the code eventually anyway - start simple and go from there!

Kind regards,
Samuel

On 5/05/2010, at 1:46 PM, Hilary Bailey wrote:

> Samuel Williams wrote:
>> Dear Hilary,
>> 
>> Can you explain what your goal is?
>> 
>> Are you trying to make a web application, or are you simply interested 
>> to learn more about Ruby?
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> Samuel
> 
> Dear Samuel,
> 
> For the last 19 years of teaching I have being toying with an efficient 
> way of accounting for students accomplishment/results. This idea has now 
> grown to the creation (in rough sketches using excel spreadsheets) of a 
> monster program that determines a school district success. It includes 
> educational, financial and economic analysis which determines how well a 
> school district has been doing.
> 
> In my past, friends who have the background in writing software have 
> been disappointing, therefore, why not write it myself.  I was advised 
> by an open source commentator to try Ruby. So, here I am on a mission to 
> learn a programming language that will allow me to express my 19 year 
> old idea. I was also told that while learning Ruby, Rails will help, as 
> it can disperse info etc..
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Thank's in advance,
> 
> HIlary
> 
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>