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Course Descriptions

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Prerequisites

Students in the Ruby Programming Certificate Program are expected to have familiarity with object-oriented concepts and to have taken at least one course in another programming language. One year of programming experience is preferred.

The certificate courses build on concepts taught in each of the previous classes and are designed to be taken in sequence. The final course, Advanced Topics in Ruby, requires experience with Ruby on Rails.

Interested in taking a single class? Some courses (designated by a below) may be open on a space-available basis to professionals who are not seeking the certificate. See Single-Course Enrollment for details.

Autumn Course

Ruby: The Core Language 

Schedule: (10 sessions) Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 p.m., Oct. 8-Dec. 18, 2008 (no class Nov. 26); $619.

The first course introduces Ruby and discusses the fundamental topics of the language. The course consists of lecture and discussion as well as a series of smaller projects that introduce the language. Topics for this course include:

• Downloading the software & setting up the environment
• Object-oriented programming overview
• Irb
• The Ruby Way
• Exception handling
• Iterators & closures
• Libraries
• Regular Expressions and Text Parsing
• Testing concepts & unit testing
• Ruby and XML
• RubyGems
• Ruby Application Archive
• Working with & contributing to the open-source community

How to sign up for individual enrollment in this course

Winter Course

Applications with Ruby on Rails 

Schedule: (10 sessions) Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 p.m., Jan. 14-Mar. 18, 2009; $619.

This course introduces participants to the web development platform of Ruby on Rails. Participants will work on a larger web application project within small teams, using business requirements supplied by the instructor. Topics include database connectivity and support, possibilities and limitations of Rails, and alternate development environments. This course also covers:

• Possibilities and limitations of Rails
• Database support (ActiveRecord, migrations)
• Q/A applications (RFuzz, watir)
• Alternatives to Rails (IOWA)
• Ruby on Rails website development
• mongrel
• capistrano (deprec)
• ActiveResource
• Ajax

How to sign up for individual enrollment in this course

Spring Course

Advanced Topics in Ruby 

Schedule: (10 sessions) Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 p.m., Apr. 8-June 10, 2009; $619.

This last course again allows students to work on smaller projects that demonstrate the more advanced functionality of Ruby. These include a more advanced discussion of the uniqueness of Ruby, i.e., The Ruby Way. Other topics include:

• Metaprogramming (open classes, Object model, eval_, DSLs)
• Ruby Extensions (RubyInline)
• Distributed Ruby
• Building RubyGems
• Alternative implementations (JRuby, Ruby.NET, YARV)
• Onigamura
• concurrency
• network programming

How to sign up for individual enrollment in this course