RPCFN: Interactive Fiction - 9

Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies

RPCFN: Interactive Fiction (#9)

– By Avdi Grimm

About Avdi Grimm

Avdi Grimm is a husband, father, software cultivator living in southern Pennsylvania, USA. He has been been working with the Ruby language for almost ten years, and is still finding new reasons to love it. He is the author of NullDB, Hammertime, AlterEgo, HookR and numerous other Rubygems and has contributed code to Gemcutter, UtilityBelt, the DataMapper/SimpleDB adapter, and other projects. He writes about Ruby and software development at his blog Virtuous Code.

Avdi has this to say about the challenge:

One of the hardest parts of getting started with a new programming language is picking problems to practice on. The problems need to be difficult enough to give you an opportunity to apply the features of the language, but small enough to complete in a reasonable amount of time. RPCFN is a great way to find practice problems which have been scoped to that “just right” size by experienced Rubyists. Complete these challenges and you will be sure to gain confidence and proficiency in the Ruby language.

Our Awesome Sponsors

This monthly programming challenge is co-sponsored by ELC Technologies and Backup My App.

Founded in 1991, ELC Technologies delivers the value of next-generation Web technologies to today’s businesses, harnessing the power of mobile applications, cloud computing, and software as a service (SaaS). ELC Technologies’ leadership in agile software development processes has brought success to business-critical implementations for clients ranging from Cisco to Tribune Interactive to LiveNation. The company is a worldwide leader in Ruby on Rails development and has pioneered dynamic language development across multiple platforms. Short iterations, demos early and often, and constant client communication regarding vision and progress are all part of the ELC promise and what makes them such a valuable development partner for Global 2000 companies.

ELC Technologies is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.

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/avdi/rpcfn-interactive-fiction.

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 24th May 2010 (Indian Standard Time). No new solutions will be accepted from 25th May onwards.
• On 25th May 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 30th May
  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:

• Avdi Grimm.
• Sponsors ELC Technologies and Backup My App.
• GitHub, for giving us access to a private repository on GitHub to store all the submitted solutions.
• The RubyLearning team.

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. Aldric Giacomoni, USA
2. Benoit Daloze, Belgium
3. James Martin, Australia

Just for Fun

1. Tanzeeb Khalili, Canada
2. Vojto Rinik, Slovakia

The Winners

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

• Benoit Daloze from Belgium (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.
• Aldric Giacomoni from USA and James Martin from Australia win any one of Pragmatic’s The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming screencasts.
• All the participants in this challenge (except Benoit Daloze 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: XML Transformer (#8) by Jamie van Dyke.

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 (#10) challenge by Ryan Bates, USA is scheduled for 1st June 2010.