RPCFN: Broadsides - 7

Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies

RPCFN: Broadsides (#7)

– By James Edward Gray II

About James Edward Gray II

James Edward Gray II was called into the principal’s office in high school for writing a black jack program on his calculator and beaming it to all the math students almost 20 years ago. He’s been tinkering with little code challenges ever since. After discovering Ruby, he formalized this process by creating the Ruby Quiz. Though he no longer runs those challenges, he’s glad to see that the spirit lives on in projects like the RPCFN.

James has this to say about the challenge:

The only way to learn to program is to have about 5,000 arguments with a compiler, in my opinion. How you get your time in is up to you, but I would rather do it with fun little exercises like the RPCFN than under more stressful circumstances. Given that, I tend to favor the game problems as they distract me from the learning I am really trying to accomplish and allow me to have more fun.

Our Awesome Sponsors

This monthly programming challenge is co-sponsored by 1st Easy Limited and Backup My App.

1st Easy Limited are delighted to have been given the opportunity to support the work of Satish Talim and his team at RubyLearning.

Taking part in the Ruby Programming Challenge? You’re welcome to take advantage of the free Ruby on Rails hosting trials that 1st Easy offer: simply register your details, and a full-featured account is yours to do with as you please for one month. Once the trial is over, you can transfer your work to a paid account, or walk away with no questions asked!

Backup My App is an automatic backup service for Ruby on Rails applications. You simply install the plugin to your Rails application and they handle the rest of the process. They store backup history for several weeks and you can restore any of them automatically. Try out their 1 GB plan for free. Backup My App has co-sponsored this challenge and is proud to make this contribution to the Ruby community.

Prizes

• The participant with the best Ruby solution (if there is a tie between answers, then the one who posted first will be the winner) will be awarded any one of PeepCode’s Ruby on Rails screencasts and a free 10 GB account for a year from Backup My App.
• From the remaining working Ruby solutions, three participants would be selected randomly and each one would be awarded any one of Pragmatic’s The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming screencasts.
• All the participants in this challenge (except the participant with the best Ruby solution) will get a free 5 GB account for 6 months from Backup My App.

The four persons who win, can’t win again in the next immediate challenge but can still participate.

The Ruby Challenge

The Challenge

The entire challenge details are available at: http://github.com/JEG2/broadsides.

How to Enter the Challenge

Read the Challenge Rules. By participating in this challenge, you agree to be bound by these Challenge Rules. It’s free and registration is optional. You can enter the challenge just by posting the following as a comment to this blog post:

1. Your name:
2. Country of Residence:
3. GIST URL of your Solution (i.e. Ruby code) with explanation and / or test cases:
4. Code works with Ruby 1.8 / 1.9 / Both:
5. Email address (will not be published):
6. Brief description of what you do (will not be published):

Note:

• As soon as we receive your GIST URL, we will fork your submission. This means that your solution is frozen and accepted. Please be sure that is the solution you want, as it is now recorded in time and is the version that will be evaluated.
• All solutions posted would be hidden to allow participants to come up with their own solutions.
• You should post your entries before midnight of 31st Mar. 2010 (Indian Standard Time). No new solutions will be accepted from 1st Apr. onwards.
• On 3rd Apr. 2010 all the solutions will be thrown open for everyone to see and comment upon.
• The winning entries will be announced on this blog before 10th Apr.
  1. The winners will be sent their prizes by email.

More details on the RPCFN?

Please refer to the RPCFN FAQ for answers to the following questions:

• What Is The Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies (RPCFN)?
• How does RPCFN benefit you?
• Challenge Rules
• Best Solution
• Can I Submit A Ruby Programming Challenge Topic?

Donations

RPCFN is entirely financed by RubyLearning and sometimes sponsors, so if you enjoy solving Ruby problems and would like to give something back by helping with the running costs then any donations are gratefully received.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

• James Edward Gray II.
• Sponsors 1st Easy Limited and Backup My App.
• GitHub, for giving us access to a private repository on GitHub to store all the submitted solutions.
• The RubyLearning team, namely Jeff Savin (Canada), Peter Crawford (Italy), Satoshi Asakawa (Japan) and Victor Goff III (USA).

Questions?

Contact Satish Talim at satish [dot] talim [at] gmail.com OR if you have any doubts / questions about the challenge (the current problem statement), please post them as comments to this post and the author will reply asap.

The Participants

There are two categories of participants. Some are vying for the prizes and some are participating for the fun of it.

In the competition

1. Dmitriy Nagirnyak, Australia – declared winner (best solution)
2. Nithin Bekal, India – declared winner (randomly selected)
3. Antonio Trogi, Canada – declared winner (randomly selected)
4. Phillip Curry, China – declared winner (randomly selected)
5. Benoit Daloze, Belgium – declared winner (randomly selected)

Just for Fun

1. Satoshi Asakawa, Japan

The Winners

Congratulations to the winners of this Ruby Challenge. They are:

• Dmitriy Nagirnyak from Australia (his Ruby Challenge solution) – the person with the best and most creative Ruby solution. He wins any one of PeepCode’s Ruby on Rails screencasts and a free 10 GB account for a year from Backup My App.
• Antonio Trogi from Canada, Benoit Daloze from Belgium, Nithin Bekal from India and Phillip Curry from China win any one of Pragmatic’s The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming screencasts.
• All the participants in this challenge (except Dmitriy Nagirnyak who gets a free 10 GB account for a year) will get a free 5 GB account for 6 months from Backup My App.

Previous Challenge

RPCFN: Fair Distribution (#6) by John Trupiano.

Note: All the previous challenges, sponsors and winners can be seen on the Ruby Programming Challenge for Newbies page.

• This challenge is now closed.
• The (#8) challenge by Jamie van Dyke, UK is scheduled for 9th Apr. 2010.