CSW is a Web application providing facts and interactive tools pertaining to my CS Ruby Gem. I wrote CS to teach myself how to write a real Ruby gem, and I’m writing CSW to learn how to create a fun Web application in Ruby.
The source code for CS and CSW is in my two repositories on github:
www.github.com/dgoldhirsch/cs www.github.com/dgoldhirsch/csw
You are very welcome to clone these things and make suggestions for improvements and/or extensions. I’d be very happy if there is any interest in the algorithms and in having such a library. So far, I haven’t found a library like this for Ruby (I’d like to hear about one if you find it–for one thing, I want to see how others have solved the same problems, but also I will try to contribute my solutions to the other library if they aren’t already there).
You can use the CS gem without CSW. CS is described in detail in the README in its github source respository, but here are the essential things you would need in order to use it. First, install the gem from github:
gem sources -a http://gems.github.com gem install dgoldhirsch-cs
Now you should be able to include it in your Ruby code. There is a README.rdoc that comes with the gem, but here is a sample of how to call one of the library methods:
require 'rubygems' # Or, plan on using the -rubygems option of ruby require 'cs' y = CS::fibonacci(6) # returns 8 which is F(6) = 3 + 5
The CSW Web site contains the on-line documentation for CS as well as interactive tools in which you can run the algorithms, you can review the existing unit test cases (and run them), and and you can post blog notes.
An important part of the site will be its blog which will be available on every page. You’ll be able to post any kind of comment/suggestion as you read about or test the library. I hope that this will encourage people to contribute to the library itself, and in any case I always enjoy talking about good coding and algorithm design.
I am hoping that CSW will be “fun”. This means that you should enjoy browsing the library of problems and algorithms, and you should enjoy trying them out and reviewing their code. I’m not sure how much fun any algorithm library can be, really, but I’m doing my best at it.
CSW is still under development. When/if I get it hosted, I’ll update this document. At that point, I’ll be learning how to get the Web site into the likely hit-list of Google (as everyone knows, there’s a lot more to professional computer programming than writing code).
Boston Ruby Users Group (www.bostonrb.org)¶ ↑
This is a plug for the Boston Ruby Users Group which I joined when I got laid off from my Java at a mid-sized, respected corporation. I was told that the Ruby/Rails community was far more friendly and welcoming than I was used to, and that if I came I’d again enjoy being a programmer. And, I have to say that I found this to be true. I am enjoying myself enormously while learning lots of interesting things from people who seem glad to welcome me as a colleague. The difference between this and what I had come to accept as the daily lot of a professional, senior software engineer is enormous.
It’s great to talk with programmers who really care about the quality of their work.
Copyright © 2009 David C. Goldhirsch. See LICENSE for details.