These days, it seems I hardly have the time for doing fun random hacks. So here I’ve started one, and if anyone finds it interesting, please take it from here and let me know how it turns out.

Loosely based off of AIML, kind of, but not really:

class Conversation

  def initialize(person)
    @person = person
    @response_id = 0
  end  

  attr_reader :response_id

  def say(msg)
    print "#{@person}: "
    @response_id = Response[@response_id].respond_to(msg)
  end 

  class Response

    def self.responses
       @responses ||= {}
    end

    def self.[](id)
      responses[id]
    end  

    def initialize(id)
      @id = id
      self.class.responses[id] = self
      @matchers = []
      @messages = []
    end               

    attr_reader :id,:matchers 

    def when(pattern,id)
      @matchers << [pattern,id]
    end     

    def inherits(arr)
      arr.each do |id|
        @matchers += Response[id].matchers
      end
    end

    def might_say(msg,weight=1)
      weight.times do
        @messages << msg
      end
    end        

    def talk
      puts @messages.sort_by { rand }.pop
    end

    def respond_to(msg)
      @matchers.each do |pattern,id|
        if msg =~ pattern
          Response[id].talk
          return id
        end
      end
      return @id
    end

  end     

end           

def response(id)
  r = Conversation::Response[id] || Conversation::Response.new(id)
  yield(r)
end

UPDATE: Check out this annotated code submitted by a reader.

I’m looking for someone to take over PDF::Writer, color-tools, and Transaction::Simple. I do not have time to maintain these anymore. I should have done this months ago, but pride of ownership and a belief that more free time would be just around the corner got in the way.

You can read more details on my original blog posting at my personal blog.

Anyone interested? Anyone know anyone interested?

I think most Rubyists have picked up a good trick or two from Jim Weirich. Though it’s only a tiny part of his latest article (Using Flexmock to Test Computational Fluid Dynamics Code), I got excited to see his ‘Existence Test’ in his code:

  def test_initial_conditions
    q = F3DQueue.new
    assert_not_nil q
  end

Looks pretty simple, eh? You might be quick to say that this doesn’t do anything. However, it is actually a pretty clever practice. This test makes sure the tests themselves are working as expected. I was already in the habit of starting with a failure, usually something like:

  def test_doomed
    flunk
  end

The purpose of the above is simply to make sure your tests are picked up within your suite, and aren’t being overlooked by your Rakefile, autotest, or whatever runner you’re using. But the existence test actually goes a little farther. Because you’re initializing an object, you’re making sure that the files you need to be loading are present, that you can build your objects, *and* that your tests are hooked up.

After you’ve got a couple tests passing, you can remove this sanity check or morph it into a setup(), whatever makes sense.

Many people think this is a little paranoid, and most of the time, it is. Still, all it takes is one bad experience coding under falsely passing tests, and you’ll be converted in no time. :)