category: ruby
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Elixir: Language Love Child?
Different programming languages, like different people, have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are simple; some are complex. Some are friendly to the programmer; some are friendly to the processor. Some cater to brilliant minds; some cater to other minds. I have spent a significant portion of my development career writing code in C#, which is accurately described as a general purpose language. It aims to be able to do most anything, rather than to be the best at any one particular thing.
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Roman Numerals Kata in Ruby, Take II
Last week I posted a screencast of my take on the Roman Numerals kata in Ruby. It was Corey Haines who encouraged me to do that, and he was gracious enough to take the time to watch it and offer some suggestions. We both thought it might be interesting if I did another iteration of it and discussed the changes. His two main concerns were that (1) it would have been nice to see the pattern extracted sooner and (2) there must be a way to introduce the zero case without blowing up all the tests.
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Geek Ballet: Roman Numerals Kata in Ruby
For a while now I’ve been a fan of code kata screencasts set to music. The musical accompaniment accentuates how beautiful code can be, and frames it to be appreciated as an artistic endeavor, even though it is still a logical exercise. I think of it as geek ballet. Corey Haines first introduced me to this art form, and he recently encouraged me to try one of my own, so here it is. It was more work than I expected, but it was good fun, and I learned a lot. In the same way that writing about any subject forces you to understand it better, demonstrating how to practice forces you to practice more.
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