Among yesterday’s front pages was a data visualisation which, at first glance, was one of the most effective I’ve ever seen: the Independent had made an infographic showing yesterday’s £6bn budget cuts in context - as a fraction of a debt mountain.
Then I looked closer - and something’s very, very wrong.
Can you tell what it […]
Twitter makes some strange things possible. Earlier today, I sent a message to Joanna Geary having heard rumours she, like me, was attempting to learn some basic (in my case, very basic) coding.
Within a few minutes, coding over a beer was suggested. Within five more, we had a dozen potential takers. And a good few programmers offering their expertise.
So what the heck? Let’s give it a go.
We’re going to try to learn Ruby. This is because it’s meant to be fairly learn-able (we’ll see…), but also because it’s handy for all the kind of web apps journos might want: quick and messy data-driven projects, scraping, searches, and the like.
So, the plan is to find a pub with wifi (and beer), bring laptops, a few tutorials, and make a start. If it goes well, we’ll try to do it once a month or so and learn some stuff. If we’re lucky, someone might even do a 10-15 minute introduction (any volunteers?).
We’re suggesting meeting at 7pm on Wednesday 31st March. The (unconfirmed) venue is The Regent, a mere stone’s throw from Angel station. Bring your own laptop!
Hopefully, it’ll all be great. For anyone feeling keen, here’s a nice basic guide to installing Ruby and here’s a crazy-and-offbeat introduction/guide to it.
I’d love to get an idea of numbers so if you fancy coming along, please chuck me an email (james@jamesrb.co.uk) or send me an @ message on twitter (this is me).
Provided we find a free venue (which is looking good), it’ll be free of charge. Win.
Hope to see some of you there!
Tags: beer, coding, data, featured, journalism, Ruby In The Pub
March 25th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Good luck with it! I sent a tweet to Joanna saying that I think it sounds like a great idea. I recently started trying to learn Ruby too and started a blog about it. Unfortunately I’ve had to put my learning on hold for the past two months but I’m hoping to get back in to it soon.
I was thinking it might be an idea to set up a discussion forum or Facebook group for true Ruby newbies. The problem I find with learning to programme is that people who already programme don’t appreciate what it’s like to know *nothing* about programming. Maybe people will tell you that they’re also learning Ruby, and that they “just know a bit of PHP”, which in my opinion is miles apart from a true newbie.
Anyway, I hope to read a review of the first #rubyinthepub soon!
March 26th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I was following your twitter chat on this yesterday. Very interesting idea. Sadly I will be elsewhere on Wednesday but i hope it goes well and will try to make a future event