Guillaume Petit Winner RPCFN - 6

In this brief interview, Satish Talim of RubyLearning talks to Guillaume Petit of France, winner of the sixth Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies.

Satish>> Welcome Guillaume and thanks for taking out time to share your thoughts. For the benefit of the readers, could you tell us something about your self?

Guillaume>> Thanks Satish for the opportunity. My name is Guillaume Petit a 26 year old nomad who sets off on a journey in the world of programming languages and has not come back yet! Aside from this, my main hobbies are reading manga, watching movies ( I am especially looking for great quotes ) or just stumbling on the Internet!

Satish>> How did you get involved with Ruby programming?

Guillaume>> It started about two years back when I discovered Ruby on Rails. I was more curious about this framework than Ruby itself at first (which I did not know), but I quickly got hooked by the language. Since then, I have been using Ruby for daily scripts here and there and continue to play with it.

Satish>> Could you name three features of Ruby that you like the most, as compared to other languages? Why?

Guillaume>> Ok, the first feature I really enjoy are blocks. Blocks offer a very powerful, yet easy way to deal with loops, iterations and nameless functions. It’s almost natural. What is really interesting is that when I started using blocks, I did not really understand the mechanism beneath, but yet, I was able to make good use of them.

Then I would go for the elegance and agility of the syntax. It’s an important point for me, a language needs to be pleasant when it comes to writing code, and in Ruby, it’s just a breeze.

The last point is more a way of doing things that a plain feature, I think. I am talking about testing. Ruby makes it really easy to test your code, and the Ruby community has largely adopted this practice. Using Ruby really made me aware of the importance of using tests, which I never did before with other languages that I used; so let’s call it a feature for today.

Satish>> How was experience of taking part in the Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies (RPCFN)?

Guillaume>> It was fun. I like those challenges because they make you think and use the language in a way you may not be familiar with. While resolving the problem, you learn more about the language. It’s a very efficient way to progress.

Satish>> How is the Ruby and Rails scenario in your country France?

Guillaume>> It’s not quite as popular as I would like it to be, but it’s making its way in.

Satish>> What are your future plans?

Guillaume>> You really hit the spot with this question since I am actually looking for the answer myself. I guess I will have to win the next challenge, this will give me some more time to answer!

More seriously, I am actually working on a Rails application to create and manage web surveys, and maybe I will do an iPhone version of it!

See you on the next challenge !

Thank you Guillaume. In case you have any queries and/or questions, kindly post your questions here (as comments to this blog post) and Guillaume would be glad to answer.