[LRUG] Topic for Next meeting

[Tom Armitage]

I think something on idiomatic Ruby would be very useful.

Most people interested in Ruby are, by and large, agreed that it's a  
lovely language to work with. Developing what I'd call a "native  
accent", though - writing Ruby like Ruby, rather than, say, writing  
Ruby like Perl - is harder. Both types of code work, but one is more  
fluent. A lot of the time in sample code you'll see idioms that  
may/may not make sense, and it's often unclear as to why that  
particular method's chosen. And, of course, there are the features  
Ruby that many people may be less familiar with - the way it  
approaches iterators, and quite what you can do with them.

I also think that it's a topic most people will be able to chip in on,  
one way or another; it's very broad - you could discuss both idiomatic  
constructions at the line-level, and idiomatic program structure -  
and, as ever, most people always have room for improvement on this.  
Simple shell scripts are an example - I was quite pleased when I  
started solving one problem by extending a built-in class, rather than  
writing a string of linear code, for example.

I think it could be very interesting; I certainly think there's enough  
to discuss.

t.

Quoting Tom Ward <tom at popdog.net>:

> There are loads of techniques we take for granted in ruby that must
> seem strange to those just learning the language.  Many of these are
> hard to grasp just from reading the pickaxe or other books. I'm sure
> there are also tricks that even experienced rubyists wont have seen (I
> don't know them yet, I'll try and research some).
>
> I'd be happy to show and explain some common ruby idioms, right from
> the very basic (e.g. loop iteration) to the more complex.  Hopefully
> this would serve as a good introduction to the ruby way of thinking
> for beginners, while experts should get something out of it too,
> particularly if we discuss as we go along.  What do people think?
>
> Tom
>
> On 5/17/06, Tiest Vilee <ruby at tiestvilee.fastmail.com.au> wrote:
>> Hey everyone,
>> We should start thinking about what we want to do for the next meeting
>> (scheduled for the 12th of June).
>> Does anyone have something they'd like to talk about?
>> Also, there seemed to be quite a few people with limited Ruby
>> experience, do some people want a bit of an intro or something?
>> It was also proposed that we could do a 'tutorial' style thing with
>> people doing some coding during the meeting, or even a 'hack night'
>> where we get together and see what we can hack up in a few hours.
>>
>> So, what do you guys think/want.
>>
>> Tiest
>>
>> (Oh, and Alec, sorry for not saying goodbye on Monday night, my curfew
>> was close so I had to rush home)
>> -----------------------------------------------
>> And on the pedestal these words appear:
>> "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
>> Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
>> Nothing beside remains: round the decay
>> Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
>> The lone and level sands stretch far away.
>>  -- Shelley
>>
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>
>
> --
> email : tom at popdog.net
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