Benoit Daloze Winner RPCFN - 9

In this brief interview, Satish Talim of RubyLearning talks to Benoit Daloze of Belgium, winner of the ninth Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies.

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

Benoit>> I would first like to thank RubyLearning for all they have done. I am a 19 year old student in first bachelor in computer sciences (at UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve). I am studying Java at courses, but I think I did more Ruby this year. Well, I just can not stop thinking “This would be so much better in Ruby”.

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

Benoit>> I have been looking on Ruby for some years now. I met Ruby the first time as a scripting language in a game software when I was 15, and since then always wanted to know more about it. It took me some time to learn it, because I did not find the good resources. I feel I am getting more and more involved everyday, as does my knowledge of Ruby.

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

Benoit>>

1. Metaprogramming: This introduces a great way to program, and allows you to make it even shorter. It gives me the feeling that I really have a control on the objects, because you can so easily manipulate them.
2. Flexibility: Whenever you think you can mix some concepts together in Ruby, it just works, limitations are rare, and often out of imagination’s bounds. You are pretty much doing it the way you want, and Ruby lets you code that way.
3. Blocks: Blocks is a entire way of expression, and the amount of complex methods made simple by this is awesome. Just think how you would do a #group_by, #each_slice or #partition in other languages. Most of the time it would be far more verbose and you would likely get a headache. Ruby has brought all the many useful things in the core, because it can be expressed in a simple method.

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

Benoit>> I’m participating since the fourth challenge, and I’m happy to participate in these interesting challenges. It is also a great way to discover other’s code, often very imaginative and original. And coding always makes you better in the language, so it is all for the best!

Satish>> You are based in Belgium. How is the Ruby and Rails scenario there?

Benoit>> People have now started noticing Rails, but this activity is mainly driven by some specific companies. Ruby is somehow not known, and sadly ignored in universities. ( But I’m trying to remedy that )

Satish>> What are your future plans?

Benoit>> I am going to work on Rails this summer, to discover this part of Ruby I have not used much yet. I’m also doing some Ruby everyday, for my own use, just feeling happy to code with a beautiful language.

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