On Web 2.0

Here is what a recent Financial Times article says about Web 2.0 technologies:

The principle behind Web 2.0 is that millions of internet users come together in cyberspace to be part of online communities. This is driven by the ubiquity of the internet – a billion people are now online and many have access to relatively cheap high-speed internet.

There has also been a generational shift. Young people have grown up with the web and are willing to socialise and share personal information online.

Brevity and Ruby

Code brevity can be a saving grace.

Containers, blocks, and iterators are core concepts in Ruby. The more you write in Ruby, the more you'll find yourself moving away from conventional looping constructs. Instead, you'll write classes that support iteration over their contents. And you'll find that this code is compact, easy to read, and a joy to maintain.

Dave Thomas, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, 2nd Edition, 2005 (page 57)

Learning to Program -- Code Sample

Here's the Ruby code for the second exercise in "Mixing it Up" chapter of Chris Pine's Learn to Program

puts '=====Your favorite number======='
puts 'What\'s your favorite number?'
fnum=gets.chomp
puts 'Have you considered changing your favoriate number to '+x=(fnum.to_i+1).to_s
puts 'Why not choose the number '+x+' which is not only bigger but also better!'