Charles Feduke Winner RPCFN - 2
22/Oct 2009
In this brief interview, Satish Talim of RubyLearning talks to Charles Feduke of USA, winner of the second Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies.
Satish>> Welcome Charles and thanks for taking out time to share your thoughts. For the benefit of the readers, could you tell us something about your self?
Charles>> Thanks Sathish for the opportunity. I am a software developer who has spent a lot of time writing code on the Windows platform and a little bit of time working on Unix, mostly in Perl. I am also an avid wargaming hobbyist and my wife and I own a brick and mortar retail store.
Satish>> How did you get involved with Ruby programming?
Charles>> I started working with Ruby as part of a “learn a new programming language each year” initiative. Ruby was the shiniest thing, so I reached for it.
Satish>> Could you name three features of Ruby that you like the most, as compared to other languages? Why?
Charles>> Flexible syntax because it allows me to express my code in a more readable way. Default arguments; significantly better than writing a bunch of method overload signatures. Heredoc, I know its weird, but I really appreciate having them available.
Satish>> How was experience of taking part in the Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies (RPCFN)?
Charles>> Awesome, I had a lot of fun with with challenges #2 and #1. Being able to see how other people solve these problems is a great benefit. When I saw Chris Strom’s solution for #2 it was like math class came rushing back to me! Not only do I get to see how to structure Ruby code and projects properly but I also learn different approaches to solving problems.
Satish>> What are your future plans?
Charles>> Continue improving my knowledge of Ruby. I am a professional C# developer so I am looking forward to using Cucumber with IronRuby for BDD next year. In my spare time I am working on a Ruby on Rails project for my retail store.
Thank you Charles. In case you have any queries and/or questions, kindly post your questions here (as comments to this blog post) and Charles would be glad to answer.