Ruby Jumpstart Level 1: 4/17-4/18/10

It all starts with Ruby Jumpstart. If you’re looking for your first introduction to Jumpstart Lab courses and programming in general, this is the course for you. You’ll jump right in and create real, useful projects. But, at the same time, you’ll build a solid foundation to build upon if you want to pursue our Ruby on Rails or Level II Ruby courses. Note that this session is open to anyone.

Level 1

An introduction to Ruby, data structures, flow control, conditions, basic I/O, and manipulating data

• Sample Projects:
  • Create a command-line Twitter client and research tool
    • Post and consume tweets, manage followings
    • Send customized direct messages to all followers
    • Build methods to easily research your followers, compare who they follow
    • Look at tweet histories, pull out links, find common RTs
  • Parse Excel Spreadsheets / Comma-Separated Values (CSVs) to interact with data
    • Manipulate and re-format data
    • Run checks to ensure format consistency
    • Lookup political and demographic information using HTTP-based APIs
    • Plot a list of addresses on a Google Map
• Skills You’ll Develop & Practice:
  • Understanding how a computer program works and how execution flows
  • Basics of objects, methods, parameters, and return values
  • Use of data structures including variables, hashes, and arrays
  • Use of flow control techniques including looping and branching
  • Principles of basic logic including equal, not equal, NOT, AND, and OR
  • Use of conditional logic including IF, ELSE, UNLESS, and ELSIF
  • Accept input and deliver output data through the console and comma-separated value files (spreadsheets)
  • How to load and access available Ruby libraries and gems

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