September Meetup: Ruby Games

September Meetup: Ruby Games http://nhruby.org/2009/9/9/september-meetup-ruby-games

So Casey has been telling me how much fun our Portland-based comrades have been having with the RubyGames concept, so we’re gonna try that out this month in Portsmouth.

Wait. What? Games? Yup.

Ruby Games will test your programming and reasoning skills by presenting you with puzzle challenges to solve in code. I’ve already worked up one puzzle problem for the group (a word jumble problem), and Casey will be coming up with a second one. We’ll have people pair up to work on these, so don’t worry at all if you don’t have a lick of Ruby programming experience. In fact, I’d say that Ruby skills aren’t nearly as important as basic reasoning skills and inventiveness are.

Sounds good, right? But it gets better! By participating, you’ll learn (whether you like it or not) about:

* Basic Ruby syntax — an engaging but simple introduction to language basics and an opportunity to do hands-on learning with your peers.
* Test-Driven Development — you’ll be writing a solution, or an implementation, to a pre-defined spec we will supply. witness the power!
* Pair programming — we’ll be pairing people up, because two heads are better than one (right?)
* Algorithm runtime efficiency — once you’ve solved the problem, we’ll take a look at how fast your solutions run and compare approaches.

You’ll have fun. And you’ll learn something. It comes with a money-back guarantee. And free pizza, too. Mark your calendars for next Thursday September 17th at 7PM and join us at RMC Research in Portsmouth. I think it just might be the best NH.rb of the year.