software-development-lessons

Exercism.org

Let’s exercise our newfound Ruby skills with Exercism.io, a wonderful non-profit project. It’s a community for leveling up programming skills through solving problems, discussion, and mentorship.

Sadly, the demand for Ruby mentorship overwhelmed the supply of mentors, so for the time being you may not receive timely code reviews; but 1) we can still review each other, and 2) the previous solutions and discussions about them are public and still incredibly useful for learning various ways to solve a problem with Ruby.

Furthermore, one of the most valuable things about Exercism is when it comes time to learn new languages (like JavaScript in a couple of weeks). A great way to learn new syntaxes is to solve the same problems that you’ve already solved before in a familiar language.

One-time Setup

  1. Sign up for an account at exercism.io.
  2. Join the Ruby Track.
  3. Complete the “Hello World” introductory exercise using the in-browser editor.
  4. Once “Hello World” is complete, the “Lasagna” exercise should be unlocked. You can see which exercises are unlocked from the track Overview:
  5. Complete “Lasagna”. There are helpful lessons and hints available in the sidebar.
  6. Once you’ve unlocked it, try the “Log line Parser” exercise.
  7. It may be useful to create a throwaway Ruby workspace in Gitpod or replit or locally, so you can use IRB or print things more easily.
  8. Start reading the automated tests and pay attention to how they are written — soon you’ll have to write tests yourself.

Once you’ve submitted a working solution, the best part, view Community Solutions.

How do they compare to your solution? Did you learn anything from them? If so, write up a quick note in your TIL blog.

Try doing a few Exercism problems each week to keep improving your Ruby skills continuously.