arrays are fun

Posted by Christopher Dent on July 24, 2019

Every day I’m in it I am just more and more excited to be doing this. I love the feeling when I get my code, an otherwise seemingly nonsensical mess of ASCII, to actually execute as expected after tweaking it for hours and hours on end.

I’ve noticed a recurring theme, it’s almost always way easier to do than I make it out to be. Take the Deli Counter lab for example.

def take_a_number(deli, name)
    if deli = []
    deli << name
    puts "Welcome #{name}.  You are number 1 in line."
    
  else 
    deli.each.with_index(1) do |name, index|
      puts "Hi #{name} you are number #{index}."
    end
    
  end
       
end 

Ater spending over a DAY trying to figure out why this code wouldn’t pass the test (despite working fine in IRB) I finally hit “ask a question.” had some great help from the coaches basically telling me I’ve overcomplicated this WAY too much and to look again at what the test is actually asking — which was something way more simple!

def take_a_number(array, name)

  array.push(name)
  puts "Welcome, #{name}. You are number #{array.count} in line."
      
end 

Was all I needed to get it passing! I’ll keep this in mind going forward!

But the important thing here is seeing how arrays are so powerfull - those two lines of code are all that was needed to pull of what seemed at first like a pretty complicated task! I learned alot about arrays today and can’t wait to keep working with them.