An Example Of Computational Thinking With Ruby

When learning to code you hear a lot about Computational Thinking. But, what does that mean? Let us break it down for you with an example of Ruby code. This example is a little esoteric, but it’s still simple, so bear with me.

 

A good way to start with computational thinking is to break down some of Ruby’s default methods, and try and replicate them. They are fairly simple, and can be seen as a combination of various steps, even a combination of various methods. We’re going to back to first principles here. (Learning to code is a bit like that.)

 

For example, reversing. Think about the things you can do with Ruby. You’ll find out that you can inject characters into a string, you can unshift and pop characters out of a string, you can split strings by predetermined characters, and you can count the number of characters in a string. Now, look them up, and think how you could reverse a string with those actions. You don’t have to use them all.

Here’s some examples of splitting strings to show you what can be done. Splitting strings looks like this:

By default it splits by spaces.

You can make it other things.

You’ll notice that .split removes the characters it splits by.

 

From here on, everything on the left side of a table will be code, and the right side will be explanations of what’s going on, so you can see the decomposition work.

Real Life example.

You’ll notice this simple process still has quite a lot of steps!
 

For example, you don’t just ‘walk’, you put your right leg forward, and your right foot onto the ground, and then do the same with your left until you reach your destination. If you fall or stop, you don’t reach your destination. That’s coding for you...

 

So here’s a new concept: The best way to do reverse with Ruby is with the Ruby way. Let’s start with what that does NOT look like.

 

Well for starters, it doesn’t look like this:

The Ruby Way

It works, but this is more a C or Python way to do things. Why would you do things the ‘Ruby way?’ It is easily recognisable to people reading your code. It works as Ruby, so it should aim to look like Ruby. This way it won’t increase cognitive load and make the software just a little harder to read and conceptualise.

 

It’s like that game where you see a bunch of colour names, and they’re coloured in a colour that isn’t their name, like RED being painted RED. That’s exactly what improperly formatted code can be like to read, and that’s why you’ll see ferocious debates on, for example, ‘tabs vs spaces’, and the placement of brackets.

What looks like Ruby?

This looks like Ruby.

 

This also looks like Ruby, and it’s very concise. This is something you’d work up to. It’s more important when you’re learning to code to know more about what’s going on than focus on making it ‘terse’.  

 

Stacks and Queues

The language of much of this is based on the computer science principle of stacks and queues. It’s well worth reading about. Understand concepts like Last In First Out, and First In First Out, and you’ll know some of the mechanics of back-end development, like working out which server requests to prioritize, and pretty much all kinds of systems where you have to prioritize, but you still eventually have to let all requests go through. These are some of the questions you think about as you scale a website for increasing numbers of users.

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