Pragmatic - Best of Ruby Quiz

Introduction

If you stop and think about it, programming knowledge is nearly useless by itself. What exactly are you going to create with all that expert programming skill, if it’s all you have? The world needs only so many text editors.

What makes the craft interesting is how we apply it. Combine programming prowess with accounting practices or even just a need to reunite hurricane victims with their scattered family members, and you have the makings of a real, and potentially useful, application. Practical programming experience can be surprisingly hard to come by. There are classes and books to give us theory and syntax. If you’ve been a programmer for any amount of time, you will have read plenty of those books. Then what? I think most of us inherently know that the next step is to write something, but many of us struggle to find a topic.

I love games. I’m always playing something, and struggling to put together a winning strategy never quite feels like work to me. I use that to make myself a better programmer. I play games with my code. I assign myself a task I’ve never tried before, perhaps to get more familiar with an algorithm or a library. Or sometimes I’ll give myself a completely routine task but add an unusual twist: implement this fullfeatured trivial program in one hour or less.