Ruby Black Belt

ruby-talk
61

> > I can understand how some people are worried about the word
> > certification, fearing that it would create some kind of hierarchy of
> > insiders, with everyone else being outsiders. Maybe this is because of
> > the nature of the word "certification".
> I share that fear. I'd hate to see people brand themselves as
> outsiders by getting Ruby "certification" :slight_smile:

...although it *might* be arguable that many Ruby programmers are certifiable.

Might? I thought it was a requirement. You mean you're therapist
didn't tell you to sign up for this list? I know mine did.

···

On 3/31/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:

On 3/29/06, dblack@wobblini.net <dblack@wobblini.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, paul.denlinger@gmail.com wrote:

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)
The best answer to most questions is "it depends".

62

Kind of rubyquizlets.com?

···

On 29 Mar 2006, at 19:34, Pistos Christou wrote:

Gregory Brown wrote:

Certainly, if there were a site that advertised itself with "Want to get
better at Ruby and have fun doing it? Visit http://....." I would click
in an instant. :slight_smile:

rubyquiz.com

Yes yes... but I meant BESIDES that. :wink:

63

Marcel Molina Jr. wrote:

Thank you for pointing out the chained 'select'!

Allow me to apologize for the incorrect problem statement.

The issue is actually not with downstream 'select's, but with other
calls that assume a hash-like behaviour on the part of the container.

Examples include Hash# and Hash#each_value.

It's not pretty but...:

h = { 0 => 0, 1 => 2, 2 => 3, 4 => 4 }

=> {0=>0, 1=>2, 2=>3, 4=>4}

Hash[*h.select { |k,v| k % 2 == 0 }.flatten].each_value {|v|

p v}
0
3
4
=> {0=>0, 2=>3, 4=>4}

What about splitting that up a little...

  class Hash
    def select_hash &blk
    Hash[ *select{ |k,v| yield k, v }.flatten ]
    end
  end

  h = { 0 => 0, 1 => 2, 2 => 3, 4 => 4 }
  h.select_hash{ |k,v| k % 2 == 0 }.select_hash{ |k,v| k > 0 }

You can chain all you want, and it isn't so ugly. =)

Zach

···

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 05:40:54PM +0900, Srinivas Jonnalagadda wrote:

64

To suggest that there's nothing between the pickaxe and rubyquiz is
ridiculous. There's plenty of opportunities. As others have said,
this list is an excellent way to learn, first by reading and
understanding, but then as James said, by contributing.

Do you honestly think someone with no computer science or programming
background can read through the pickaxe and then
start submitting rubyquiz.com solutions just by reading and posting comments
to this mailing list? Now thats ridiculous.

Dont you realise the sheer volume of this list is enough to
make a newbies head explode? Not to mention probable
kidney failure.

Ruby-Talk mailing list is where we all end up, but its not
where people should start, at least not in my opinion.

Frankly I'm surprised so many people say this is a good
place for newbies to learn. I guess they say that because this
is the best source out of what is currently available within the
ruby community, which just goes to prove my point that there
is not much out there for newbies who are finished the pickaxe
but nowhere near ready for rubyquiz.com.

I find teaching (contributing) to be the best vehicle for learning.
It forces you to really fill in the gaps in your own understanding as
you work through it. Plus, if there are still gaps, others will
kindly point those out as well. :slight_smile:

I agree, thats a good way for someone with a strong background in computers
to pickup a second or third language.

In addition, there's such things as IRC, RubyConf, RailsConf, Rails
Studio, etc.. etc..

Would you care to elaborate a little more on how those are tailored to educate
newbies from around the world to the point that they can start writing
high quality solutions to rubyquiz?

IRC seems to make some newbies lazy, they can stop studying and just
bug people for answers until they get kicked out or someone breaks down
and solves the problem for them in which case they've learned nothing.

Ok, so in conclusion, this is the current ladder for newbies:
Pickaxe -> (IRC,ruby-talk) -> rubyquiz.com

IPlease keep in mind, im not bashing anything: Pickaxe? Awesome.
#ruby-lang? Awesome.
Ruby-Talk? Awesome. rubyquiz.com? Awesome.

And I really mean that, each one of those things has a place near and
dear to my heart.

···

On 3/29/06, Michael Trier <mtrier@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Alex Combas
http://noodlejunkie.com/

65

Bill Guindon wrote:

···

On 3/31/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:

...although it *might* be arguable that many Ruby programmers are certifiable.

Might? I thought it was a requirement. You mean you're therapist
didn't tell you to sign up for this list? I know mine did.

Must be a quack.

:slight_smile:

--
James Britt

http://www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
Ruby Code & Style - The Journal By & For Rubyists
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://refreshingcities.org - Design, technology, usability

66

Actually, I probably shouldn't be saying this..

Peter Szinek and myself are currently working on a Ruby version
of the pythonchallenge.com project.

We've registered the rubychallenge.com domain, and we've talked
to the Nadav who created pythonchallenge.com. In fact Nadav actually
offered to join us and give us all of his puzzles to port over to ruby.

We've decided to not go that route, although it will take a bit
longer we felt that original content would be better in the long run.

We have registered the project on rubyforge and hopefully
we'll have something available soon for people to see and play with.

We've got some really innovative ideas happening, this is not going to
be a port, in fact its not going to be like anything else on the market.

I'll be at Canada on Rails in Vancouver on April 13-14 and hopefully
will have something to show people by that time.

···

--
Best regards,
Alex Combas
http://noodlejunkie.com/

67

Alex, obviously you have different opinions / experiences about what
are effective and non-effective means for learning, and that's good,
because everyone approaches these things differently. I can only
speak from my own experiences.

The reason I find the lists a good learning method is because,
although there is a flood of postings they run the gamut. There are
very beginner type questions and then there are questions / comments
about stuff that I have no way of even following. The advantage is
it's an "iron sharpens iron" type of environment. I only have to pay
attention to those things that are in my sphere of understanding at
any given moment. Often seeing the different approaches / answers
works in a mentoring kind of way. For me that's beneficial.

Hopefully you can codify that which you think would be beneficial for
those people in that "in-between" stage and provide an effective
platform for them. I really think that has merit. Good luck.

Michael

68

Alex Combas wrote:

Peter Szinek and myself are currently working on a Ruby version
of the pythonchallenge.com project.

I look forward to the first public release of this. Please keep us
informed. :slight_smile:

Pistos

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

69

That is so cool!

Please make the higher levels as weird and wiggy as you possibly can.

Also, if you need help, I wouldn't mind porting some puzzles from
Python. It's absolutely alliterative.

···

--
Giles Bowkett
www.gilesgoatboy.org

On 4/5/06, Alex Combas <alex.combas@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, I probably shouldn't be saying this..

Peter Szinek and myself are currently working on a Ruby version
of the pythonchallenge.com project.

We've registered the rubychallenge.com domain, and we've talked
to the Nadav who created pythonchallenge.com. In fact Nadav actually
offered to join us and give us all of his puzzles to port over to ruby.

We've decided to not go that route, although it will take a bit
longer we felt that original content would be better in the long run.

We have registered the project on rubyforge and hopefully
we'll have something available soon for people to see and play with.

We've got some really innovative ideas happening, this is not going to
be a port, in fact its not going to be like anything else on the market.

I'll be at Canada on Rails in Vancouver on April 13-14 and hopefully
will have something to show people by that time.

--
Best regards,
Alex Combas
http://noodlejunkie.com/

70

Giles Bowkett wrote:

That is so cool!

Please make the higher levels as weird and wiggy as you possibly can.

Well, that won't be a problem at all :wink: We have to make a lot of
decisions and have some issues to resolve, but to craft some weird
levels is definitely not among them :wink:

Also, if you need help, I wouldn't mind porting some puzzles from
Python. It's absolutely alliterative.

Well, we would like to come out with a first design and a basic set of
riddles, but after this we would definitely like to ask the community
members to contribute with ideas.
What do you mean by 'porting some puzzles from Python'? If you mean
from pythonchallenge, we decided to drop that idea (as we would not like
to viloate the copyright or something).

Cheers,
Peter

71

The creator of python challenge offered to give us (Peter and me) the source to
all the puzzles he has hosted on his website, he is really quite cool.
He also said that he has had it in mind to do this sort of thing for quite
some time, but I guess he is busy just like the rest of us and just never found
the time. I have no idea where Peter and myself are finding the time,
we both work
full-time as well as take schooling, but somehow we're managing.

But regarding the content at pythonchallenge.com as Peter said, we've
decided we don't want to copy that content, many people have already
solved those puzzles as they're quite generic.

We will be more than happy to look at any original work from authors
after we make our
initial release.

···

On 4/7/06, Peter Szinek <peter@rt.sk> wrote:

Giles Bowkett wrote:
> That is so cool!

> Please make the higher levels as weird and wiggy as you possibly can.
Well, that won't be a problem at all :wink: We have to make a lot of
decisions and have some issues to resolve, but to craft some weird
levels is definitely not among them :wink:

> Also, if you need help, I wouldn't mind porting some puzzles from
> Python. It's absolutely alliterative.
Well, we would like to come out with a first design and a basic set of
riddles, but after this we would definitely like to ask the community
members to contribute with ideas.
What do you mean by 'porting some puzzles from Python'? If you mean
from pythonchallenge, we decided to drop that idea (as we would not like
to viloate the copyright or something).

--
Best regards,
Alex Combas
http://noodlejunkie.com/