Martin DeMello wrote:
> What are some of the 'fun' things someone just getting into programming
> (as a hobby) could do with Ruby?


Well, packaging systems seem to bring smiles to everyone around ....


:)



No, seriously, I've written a number of simple scripts to fetch web 
pages.  Usually they just construct a URL based on some command-line 
input, then make a system call to launch a browser.  I search Google 
this way, as well as look for stuff on buy.com, check TV listings, read 
the news, grep/navigate my local wiki, a few other things.

What might make this interesting for a newcomer would be to write a few 
scripts like these, then see what they have in common, then see if they 
can extract the common stuff into a class in an external file.  I ended 
up with a small class to encapsulate browser selection, url 
construction, and browser launching.

Along the way, one learns how to get parameters from the command line, 
validate the input, build new strings, do some basic if/then logic, 
write a simple class, use 'require'.

And one ends up with actually useful tools for daily life.


James