Courses for newcomers to programming start with showing the mechanism of how to enter a program, how to prepare that program to be run, and how to actually run it. We then show them how to read an input (usually from the keyboard), calculate, save values into variables and resuse them a few lines later, and output resuts. That's a tried and tested formula for getting something up and running quickly, and that "something" being a useful program. But it's a very long way indeed from a web application, which is what many delegates are writing these days ... or that's how it looks.

And so - at the end of the first day of our "Learning to program in ..." courses, we take the code that we've written and put it into context - take it a step further, and a small step to being recognisable in their environment. It's helpful in putting stuff in context, and it's motivational in that it helps delegates see where they're going.

• In First Principles terms, keyboard to screen is the same thing as browser input to browser output via a web server - both are using Standard In and Standard Out - the process's main IO channels.

• In First Principle terms, reading from a file is just like reading from the keyboard - it's a stream of data from which the next line's returned each time you do a read.

And applying those first principles, a program that goes keyboard to screen can rapidly be converted to going data file to browser window. I've put a program that I wrote at the end of the very first day of programming for delegates this week, which runs on both a web server (via CGI) and stand alone from the keyboard. Source is [here].

Being a "first day program", I've used straightforward language elements rather than shorter / more efficient ones that come later in the course, and this has lead to a degree of repetition which - in the longer term - I would frown upon as each repeat doubles up the changes and testing needed when the program needs alteration.

Being a "dual use" program, I've not put any specifics / HTML formatting into it ... such things would come in an applicaton program, leaving an API for the data handling clean for any environment.
(written 2013-02-14, updated 2013-02-15)

 R114 - Ruby on the Web
  [1891] Ruby to access web services - (2008-11-16)
  [2605] Ruby on Rails - a sample application to teach you how - (2010-01-30)
  [2607] Answers on Ruby on Rails - (2010-01-30)
  [3431] Ruby at both extremes of your website - (2011-09-10)
  [3432] 3 digit HTTP status codes - what are they, which are most common, which should be a concern? - (2011-09-11)
  [3623] Some TestWise examples - helping use Ruby code to check your web site operation - (2012-02-24)
  [3773] Ruby on the web - a simple example using CGI - (2012-06-22)
  [4502] Reading and parsing a JSON object in Ruby - (2015-06-01)

Q101 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Programming Principles
  [2001] I have not programmed before, and need to learn - (2009-01-19)
  [2022] Pre and post increment - the ++ operator - (2009-02-03)
  [2228] Where do I start when writing a program? - (2009-06-11)
  [2310] Learning to write high quality code in Lua - (2009-07-30)
  [2327] Planning! - (2009-08-08)
  [2415] Variable names like i and j - why? - (2009-09-22)
  [2510] The music of the stock market - (2009-11-22)
  [2550] Do not copy and paste code - there are much better ways - (2009-12-26)
  [2586] And and Or illustrated by locks - (2010-01-17)
  [2737] Improving your function calls (APIs) - General and PHP - (2010-04-24)
  [2769] Easy - but for whom? - (2010-05-18)
  [2878] Program for reliability and efficiency - do not duplicate, but rather share and re-use - (2010-07-19)
  [2915] Looking up a value by key - associative arrays / Hashes / Dictionaries - (2010-08-11)
  [2964] An introduction to file handling in programs - buffering, standard in and out, and file handles - (2010-09-21)
  [3026] Coding efficiency - do not repeat yourself! - (2010-11-02)
  [3456] Stepping stones - early coding, and writing re-usable code quickly - (2011-09-24)
  [3542] What order are operations performed in, in a Perl expression? - (2011-12-07)
  [3548] Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas - (2011-12-10)
  [3551] Some terms used in programming (Biased towards Python) - (2011-12-12)
  [3673] Object oriented or structured - a comparison in Python. Also writing clean regular expressions - (2012-03-26)
  [3878] From Structured to Object Oriented Programming. - (2012-10-02)
  [3928] Storing your intermediate data - what format should you you choose? - (2012-11-20)
  [3954] Lesson 1 in programing - write clean, reuseable and maintainable tidy code - (2012-12-16)
  [4061] Seamless, integrated IT - we have a long way to go! - (2013-04-11)
  [4090] Test Driven Development in Python - Customer Comes First - (2013-05-16)
  [4118] We not only teach PHP and Python - we teach good PHP and Python Practice! - (2013-06-18)
  [4153] Rooms available tonight - how to code an algorithm from first principles - (2013-08-19)
  [4206] Writing the perfect program in Tcl? - (2013-11-13)
  [4325] Learning to program - what are algorithms and design patterns? - (2014-11-22)
  [4611] Hungarian, Camel, Snake and Kebab - variable naming conventions - (2016-01-03)
  [4632] Remember to ask the question before you listen for the answer - (2016-01-26)
  [4645] What are callbacks? Why use them? An example in Python - (2016-02-11)

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Annual Accounts - a big job for a small business
Web and console - same principle, same code - Ruby example
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Helping search engines with appropriate 400 error codes
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Handling failures / absences of your backend server nicely
Travelogue - from the Netherlands to London via Hook and Harwich