[Vit-discuss] How do I [thing] in Ruby?

[Todd Grimason]

* ES <rvit-ml at magical-cat.org> [2005-03-11 18:14]:
> As an aside suggestion; in addition to/instead of the "Ruby for [language]
> programmers", there should be a section labeled "How do I [thing] in Ruby".
> It would show common tasks, creating a webserver etc., maybe arranged by
> category ("Nuby", "Web", "UNIX", "GUI", etc.). These Ruby solutions could be
> accompanied by (poorly written:) comparative solutions in other languages.

I posted a similar idea to c.l.r a bit ago (and python a year or two ago, for
naught) :

==================================

"Using Python^H^H^H^H^H^HRuby For..." 

Web Programming               Education 
(CGI, App Servers, etc)       (Teaching programming,class texts,&c) 

Scientific                    Graphical Interfaces (GUI) 
(genome, biochem, &c)         (wx, tk, etc.) 

Networking                    Statistical/Financial 
(servers, sockets, etc)       (numeric, financial libs, etc) 

==================================

I primarily meant this as a quick guide or catalog though, as opposed to
contrasting ruby vs. x-lang examples. I'd tend to think specific code examples
should live either in the docs and/or the 'representative' projects in each
category though. 

This sort of listing would be great for someone showing up and thinking "okay,
I'm sick of perl, can I rewrite my bio app in ruby? Are there any libs written
yet?" One click, maybe an intro paragraph ("ruby has been in use in science since blah blah...") followed by a maintained, edited list of links - probably in this case starting with http://www.bioruby.org/ (?) and so forth.

I think this is a common usage of a language site, at least it should be, based
on the number of people who post in newsgroups and lists saying "are there any
libs for ___ in ruby?"
 
> Then, in the event that a particular aspect is not satisfactorily covered
> by these examples, there'd be a box to fill in a request and the reqester's
> e-mail address; this request is then forwarded to ruby-talk (and maybe
> #ruby-lang). Once a satisfactory solution is formulated, it gets mailed to
> the requester and added to the list on the page.

that would be a nice touch and good way of leveraging community knowledge out
there... as long as it was reasonably edited and not a complete free-for-all
(would approach unusable quickly in that case...)

-- 

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