task.md

Writing a ruby program

Goals

• write a ruby program
• escape special characters
• learn about "usage"
• Use loops
• Give your program arguments
• Use ruby documentation

Tips

• Look at Ruby documentation: https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/String.html
• Inspired by this tutorial: https://learnrubythehardway.org/book/ex1.html

Steps

1. Write a ruby program with exactly the following output (including separate lines and dots):

I want a dyke for president

...

I want a Black woman for president

I want someone with bad teeth...

Zoe Leonard

1992

2. Put quotes around the poem:

"I want a dyke for president ... I want a Black woman for president I want someone with bad teeth..." Zoe Leonard 1992

3. Write a comment above the script to tell me generally what the program does and how to use it. You can also add your authorship name and a cc license (https://creativecommons.org/) if you want to! (not necessary). Here is a simple example: http://pastebin.com/EGUmkHQ6. I DO NOT mean writing comments after each method. How can you write your code in a way that people can easily understand what your program does? Try naming variables and methods after the things they are/do.

4. Allow the user to add a line to the poem after the first line. How would we do this? Using arguments - there are a few different ways to do this, here is one way: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4244611/pass-variables-to-ruby-script-via-command-line. Here is another way, using user input with gets: http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/getting_input.html. Pick one, it doesn't matter!

5. Make it so that a user can write as many arguments as they want with each argument displaying as a line in the poem. hint: loop over the arguments.

6. Allow the user to input their name as author to the piece, e.g. "Zoe Leonard & [insert user's name here].

7. Tell the user how many lines they added, e.g., "Your new version of the poem added 3 lines"

8. How can we improve our program? Could we name our variables smarter so people know what we are talking about? Could we "extract variables"[http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/extractVariable.html] where we write in explicit things?