News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by steveklabnik on Saturday December 25, 2010 @10:32AM (#2038998)
Hey everyone-

I actually have a fair amount to say about this release, but I've been burning the candle at both ends for the last few weeks putting this together, so that'll be a post for another day. It's not perfect, but it's pretty solid. As always, feedback is really appreciated.

I'll boil it down to one sentence: It's really hard to apply YAGNI and actually build an MVP. Here it is.

Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by jdp23 on Saturday December 25, 2010 @10:59AM (#2039022)
Congrats, Steve!

Would HacketyHack be good for a smart 10-year-old who's new to programming?

Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by steveklabnik on Saturday December 25, 2010 @11:02AM (#2039026)
I started with BASIC when I was 7, so I'd say yes, absolutely. The four lessons walk you through a tour of what Hackety can do, the concepts of programming via LOGO, basic programming in Ruby, and then simple things with Shoes. I've got a bunch of examples, too... you can check them out on GitHub directly, and see how you feel about them:

Lessons: https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/tree/master/lesso...

Samples: https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/tree/master/sampl...

The biggest thing is that it's just Ruby, with a bunch of libraries. I still need to come up with a good solution for STDIN and STDOUT, but it's all just Ruby 1.9.1.

Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by rick_2047 on Saturday December 25, 2010 @01:06PM (#2039186)
It's nice that you have a very easy API to make lessons, maybe someone can port _why's poignant guide to ruby as a Interactive Fiction to hackety hack.

Q: is there a way to add pictures?

Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by steveklabnik on Saturday December 25, 2010 @01:34PM (#2039224)
Yep, I include a picture of Matz in the Ruby one: https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/blob/master/lesso...

You can also just use a URL from the web, and the first time the program runs, it downloads and caches it.

Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by Stwerner on Saturday December 25, 2010 @03:06PM (#2039345)
Congratulations Steve! Great to see progress being made =)
Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by steveklabnik on Saturday December 25, 2010 @03:11PM (#2039351)
Thanks Scott. I'll get a port over to Brown Shoes as soon as it's ready. ;)
Re:Merry Christmas, HN. Hackety Hack 1.0 is here. by andreyf on Sunday December 26, 2010 @02:57AM (#2040293)
I'll boil it down to one sentence: It's really hard to apply YAGNI and actually build an MVP.

I never quite understood YAGNI, because it seems illogical to always take that stance. Sometimes, you're gunna need it. Say YAGNI to everything, and you'll never create meaningful reusable abstractions. Other times, sure, you might be jumping into creating abstractions that don't turn out as useful as one would have hoped, but that's a decision which has to be made on a case-by-case basis.