Chris Pine is just finishing off the first draft of his "Learn to  
Program with Ruby" book (based on his incredibly successful web  
series), and I'm looking for reviewers.

However, before you all rush to sign up, there's a catch. I'm really  
looking for folks who are the book's target audience: folks with  
little or no programming experience who want to learn how to code.  
They'll probably be from mid teens on up, curious, and happy to give  
honest feedback as they go through the book.

So, if you know someone like that, and if they'd be interested in  
participating, have them drop me a line (d...@pragprog.com).

Thanks a lot

Of course, if this doesn't fit your model, we'll just have to buy a copy when
it comes out.

-pate

On 10/4/05, Dave Thomas <d...@pragprog.com> wrote:

On 10/4/05, pat eyler <pat.ey...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Oct 4, 2005, at 11:27 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

Thanks

The obvious/easy workaround is to not have the syntax
error in the regexp :-) but I just figured I'd report
the less than perfect failure mode.

=========================================================================== =========
irb(main):012:0*
irb(main):013:0*
irb(main):014:0* def ascleanstr(v)
    (v.class==String && v=~/\A\s*\Z/) ?  nil :
    (v.class==Array  && v[0].class==Fixnum) ? v.pack("C*").unpack("H*")[0] :
     v = v.to_s.strip.gsub(/\r/,"")
     v =~ v.length>3 && /\A[A-Z\#0-9 _\t\-\/(\)]*\Z\/ ?
         v.split(/[\t _]+/).map{|w| w=~/\d/ ? w : w.capitalize}.join(" ") :
         v
end

irb(main):015:1> irb(main):016:1* irb(main):017:1* irb(main):018:1> irb(main):019:1/ irb(main):020:0* (irb):19: warning: invalid character syntax; use ?\\
s
SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):19: premature end of regular expression: /\A[A-Z\#0-9 _\t\-\/(\)]*\Z\/ ?
         v.split(/
(irb):19: syntax error
         v.split(/[\t _]+/).map{|w| w=~/\d/ ? w : w.capitalize}.join(" ") :
                    ^
(irb):19: unmatched ): /).map{|w| w=~/
(irb):19: syntax error
         v.split(/[\t _]+/).map{|w| w=~/\d/ ? w : w.capitalize}.join(" ") :
                                         ^
(irb):19: syntax error
         v.split(/[\t _]+/).map{|w| w=~/\d/ ? w : w.capitalize}.join(" ") :
                                                               ^
(irb):19: syntax error
         from (irb):20
         from ^C:0
irb(main):021:0> SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):21: syntax error
         from (irb):21
         from ^C:0
irb(main):022:0> irb(main):023:0* def ascleanstr(v)
    (v.class==String && v=~/\A\s*\Z/) ?  nil :
    (v.class==Array  && v[0].class==Fixnum) ? v.pack("C*").unpack("H*")[0] :
     v = v.to_s.strip.gsub(/\r/,"")
     v =~ v.length>3 && /\A[A-Z\#0-9 _\t\-\/(\)]*\Z\/ ?
         v.split(/[\t _]+/).map{|w| w=~/\d/ ? w : w.capitalize}.join(" ") :
         v
end

free(): invalid pointer 0x8186ac0!
free(): invalid pointer 0x817a7d0!
free(): invalid pointer 0x8182bf8!
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb.rb:285: [BUG] Segmentation fault
ruby 1.8.3 (2005-05-12) [i686-linux]

fwiw, i myself have a kid whom i want to learn ruby. He is 13 and loves to do html stuff mainly because he can see graphic results immediately, in other words, he loves to show his stuff to his classmates and friends. These kids are very restless, and i have come to the point of surrender and to wait till they "grow" up.

So my q: does the book also cater/target to these type of kids? If yes, i'm willing to participate (btw, how much is the book?).

Thanks always and kind regards -botp

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 18:19:00 -0700, Peña, Botp <b...@delmonte-phil.com>  
wrote:

======================================================
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC
Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< BestMindHealth.com / t...@bestmindhealth.com >>
======================================================

   http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram

anyway, what I said was:

----

On 10/5/05, Peña, Botp <b...@delmonte-phil.com> wrote:

:)

Cheers,

I've missed your article until it'd happend to be discovered,
because you posted it as a reply to an unrelated thread.

At Wed, 5 Oct 2005 02:56:10 +0900,
Ron M wrote in [ruby-talk:159019]:

  date: 2005-05-23 12:24:28 +0900;  author: matz;  state: Exp;  lines: +2 -1
  * re.c (make_regexp): should not return junk address during
    compile time.  [ruby-dev:26206]

I picked up the Pragmatic Programmer some years ago simply because it
had a wood plane on the cover( I knew how to use a tablesaw and a
router well before a debugger). I now manage a team of 6 rookie
programmers who I have run through a course that I based on the
Pragmatic Programmer.

I've been using Ruby more and more for daily tasks (replacing Perl) and
have been, in general, working to get it more accepted and used where I
work.

While most on my team may now claim having 6-9 months of "real"
experience, they are still pretty young, so we might be a good
candidate group for you. If you're going for the level of the
Deitel&Deitel books ( C How to Program, etc ), while excellent
books!!!, that is definately more elementary than where we're at. If
that's the case you could kick us a Rails book though. I would bet that
one in our office would get 10 more bought in a hand full of months.

I'd also be more than happy to subject my team to any type of
ruby/rails experiment that we could dream up. Maybe something like
subject 6 rookie programmers to a new language and then get their take
on how they felt about it.

We're the content engineering team at simplyhired.com.

cheers,
Daniel