Gain insights into Ruby programming by building a hangman game. Learn about fundamentals, practical applications, and develop strong programming skills. No prior coding experience needed.

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TestRuby

testGallows

 test_dictionary

Programming is a way to teach a computer how to do something the way the programmer thinks it should be done. Put another way, programming is the description of how to perform some processing. 

In this course, you'll get hands-on experience in programming using Ruby by building a hangman game along the way. In the game, a player chooses a (hidden) word while a second player tries to guess the word. You'll learn to build the hangman game incrementally, and by the end of the course, you'll have a fully functional hangman game while learning the fundamentals of programming. This is a beginner-level course and doesn’t require any prior experience in programming.

The course will provide a strong foundation for the advancement of your programming skills and also pave the way for a career in programming.

Learning to Program in Ruby: By Example

# Introducing a routine
Up to this point, we’ve been showing the number of letters by explicitly setting the display (by using `puts "_ _ _ _ _"`). Since we’ve set the `hidden_word`, the current game only offers one hidden word.

We will, of course, consider having other words. Therefore we must be able to show the number of letters depending on the word we hide. And we do this dynamically.

Let’s introduce a new concept offered by Ruby language called “function,” “method,” or “routine”. The name routine is the one that is best suited.

When we do something that we repeat over and over, we say that we accomplish a routine task. The task is broken down into a sequence of actions or operations that we perform in the same order. The programming languages allow defining a series of operations or instructions, grouping them, and giving a name to the group. Such a group of operations, togather with its name, is what we call a **routine** (or function).

In Ruby, we define such a group using the `def` word (from “define”), followed by the name we want to give the group. We then provide the sequence of instructions. Finally, we end the group with the `end` word.

The name is significant because we will later use it to refer to the group of instructions performing a routine task. The name is simply the name of the message that we send. When Ruby manages the sending of the message, it searches what action is to be executed from among the names of the routines that have been defined.

As we already mentioned, in Ruby, the processing of a message always produces a result. The result is what the last instruction of the sequence produces.

Let’s add a routine that builds the information to show the number of letters.

Before We Begin

Getting Started

Handling Multiple Letters

Improving the Implementation

Declaring Results and Improving Presentation

Generalizing Our Implementation

Wrap Up

Improve the Behavior by Using a Routine

Introducing a routine