Well, that went over like a lead balloon.  Back to the drawing (poster?)
board.

Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Berger [mailto:djberg96 / attbi.com]
> Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 12:07 PM
> To: ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org
> Subject: Ruby Conference idea
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been playing with extensions lately and I'm having a 
> rather hard go 
> at it.  Things just aren't clicking and my hands are getting 
> sore from 
> pounding on my desk.  I was thinking what I really need is someone to 
> sit next to me for a bit of pair programming to correct me when I do 
> something dumb.
> 
> This got me thinking - would this be a neat idea for the Ruby 
> conference?  We could have our expert instructor (Guy? Dave? 
> Matz?) lead 
> the class.  The class would be grouped into pairs, with one 
> *nix laptop 
> per pair.  After some teaching by the instructor, the pairs 
> would then 
> start applying their new knowledge.
> 
> Now, I've been working on the idea of a "Sys" namespace, with 
> a bunch of 
> little unix utilities put under that namespace.  Stuff like "who", 
> "uname", etc.  We could assign each pair (randomly?) the task of 
> starting an extension for that particular utility.  I wouldn't expect 
> these modules to be completed.  I think just getting in at 
> one get/set 
> method, one iterative method, a constant or two and perhaps a class 
> method would be a good start.
> 
> Now, it doesn't have to be unix system utilities.  It could be some 
> other utility people are really interested in.  We could have 
> everyone 
> work on different parts of one big module, for example.  I'm 
> definitely 
> unix-centric on this, however, as I haven't a clue how to write 
> extensions for Windows (nor do I care to).
> 
> The point is that we could teach extensions *and* build 
> working modules 
> that would actually be useful once completed (hopefully) at 
> the same time.
> 
> I think this would probably be a two block session (80 
> minutes - 40 for 
> the initial instruction/introduction to C extensions and 
> another 40 for 
> the paired programming).
> 
> Just a thought.  Opinions?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel Berger
>