A letter to my daughter, Augusta, in ruby

Me and a former boss a while back:

Me: "When I was taking C++ back in high school-"

Boss: "Dear god, what kind of high school did you go to?"

Me: "A Catholic one"

Boss: "Ah, that explains it"

Yes, it actually was a bit of a hard-line place. Wouldn't trade it for the world though, even the C++ class (since that's where I discovered Python).

and you got divorce papers from your wife written in Objective-C ? (Or maybe Go?)

I God I hope that was meant to be a joke, if not I'm going straight to hell...

So he returned 0?

Here's a shorter version of love.rb:

    class Augusta; end

    def a_letter(*args, &blk)
      puts 'Augusta, we <3 you!'
    end

Hah! I went for over-achievement, I suppose.

I was about to say that it reminds me of the Haiku's I've been collecting:

http://timelessrepo.com/haiku

Or Tribute (that I wrote):

http://timelessrepo.com/tribute

Hey, it's Open Source, right? LICENSE seems to confirm this.

That's why it's MIT. Please feel free!

This has nothing to due with obfuscation but the malleability of ruby itself, read the required file he made a DSL.

??

Nice. It inspired me to spend some free time I had today doing same thing in perl 5 & 6 - https://gist.github.com/4542918

Are there specific pieces you don't understand? Or would you want a walkthrough?

I must confess I have not seen many. I drew inspiration from Marc-André Cournoyer and his post "how to apply to a job" http://macournoyer.com/blog/2010/02/23/how-to-apply-to-a-job.... However, I've entertained the idea of writing code as prose for quite some time.

See the Perl Poetry page on Perlmonks for regular contributions:

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=Perl%20Poetry

Black perl - originally by Larry Wall & updated for Perl 5 by Ovid (http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=17000)

        BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
	     open spellbook, study, select it, confess, tell, deny;
	write it, print the hex while each watches,
	     reverse "its length", write again;
	     kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
	          unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
	sort the flock (then, warn "the goats". kill "the sheep");
	     kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
	     values aside, each one;
	          die sheep, die, reverse system
	          you accept (reject, respect);
	next step,
	     kill next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
	     wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
	     do it ("as they say").
	do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
	return last victim; package body;
	     exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
	     select (quickly) & warn next victim;
	AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
	     wait, wait until time;
	     wait until next year, next decade;
	          sleep, sleep, die yourself and
	          rest at last

That's what I going for. I tagged it as "Code as Art." I initially dubbed it a poem but decided it read more like a letter, instead. Personally, I think it qualifies as code prose.

Don't take me wrong, but I do not think that this poem (or, as @jpfuentes states correctly, prose) can be categorized as "art". I think of it as a lovely crafted letter, written on a very unusual support. Nothing too much different from a cross-stitched handkerchief.

Anyway, it's seriously touching.

Hahaha. Kids will do that to you.

You may consider reading up on the Hacker way:

A hacker is a person that loves to program, or someone who enjoys playful cleverness, or a combination of the two.[3] The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media[4]) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking. However the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves (e.g. programming), but the manner in which it is done: Hacking entails some form of excellence, for example exploring the limits of what is possible[5], thereby doing something exciting and meaningful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)

The concept of code as poetry - or the hidden elegance capable behind it is something that obviously piques ones interest - if it were just for the aww factor it wouldn't get as many up votes. Code is an art, and it's nice to see it sometimes used for something other than the norm.

at least know how to read ruby source code