Interested in becoming a better programmer? 

Interested in becoming a better programmer? Practice! 

Ruby + Programming Contests Tristan Hume 

What are these "Programming Contests" of which you speak? 

What are these "Programming Contests" of which you speak? A programming contest is a timed challenge where you are given a number of problems which you must write code to solve. 

Secret: Programming contests are actually test driven development in disguise. (With a bit of math and algorithms thrown in) 

(Very Easy) Example Problem 

Ruby Solution 8 Lines 

Programming ContestsMake you better. Make you faster. Make your code faster. Make your code less buggy. Make you smarter. 

Ruby is a great language to write contests in. 

Remember that 8 line Ruby solution? 

Java Solution 34 Lines 

Q.E.D 

Ruby - Rails 

Ruby = Goodies! 

Ruby = Goodies! 

My Favorite Methods IO.read Array#combination Array#rotate Enumerable#map Enumerable#inject Array#uniq! Array#flatten Array#sort String#to_i Integer#gcd 

Other Handy Stuff: Bugless loops VS 

Other Handy Stuff: Pretty Print 

TL;DR: Ruby is awesome and you should try programming contests. 

Some Online Contests You Should Try ● The Google Code Jam. (My personal favorite) ○ Write it in any language. Run it on your own computer. ○ Multiple rounds. Win stuff if you do well. ○ http://code.google.com/codejam/ ● TopCoder ○ Constant online contests with the best in the world. ○ Get ranked and see how your skills compare. ○ http://www.topcoder.com ● Project Euler ○ More practice than contest. Highly math focused. ○ http://projecteuler.net 

Thank you. (Slides available at http://tinyurl.com/rubycontests)