One month codebase: getting started

Read the Github guide on forking.

Good. Now if you want to follow along with my one month codebase project, you know how to do it easily. This month, I'm reading Ruby.

Now you have a shit ton of files and directories. Your goal is to grok them. And then improve them.

Now, you could have just cloned the repo directly, and gone abrowsing through the code. Don't do that. It makes things harder when you find bugs, typos, etc, to contribute a fix. Fork it, keep the codebase current, and push all your changes. The goal here is to not just read the code, but to learn what it's doing. That means getting your hands dirty and then leaving a trail of grubby handprints all over the code.

Optparse.rb is a good example of what you'll find: fine documentation and introduction, with scattered bits of undocumented and initially terrifying magic. Kind of like having sex for the first time.