Comments and documentation in Ruby - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Comments and documentation

📖 Scenario: You are working on a small Ruby program that calculates the area of rectangles. To make your code easier to understand for others and for your future self, you will add comments and documentation step-by-step.

🎯 Goal: Create a Ruby program that stores rectangle dimensions, adds comments explaining the code, and prints the area with clear documentation.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a hash with rectangle dimensions

Add a comment explaining the hash

Write a method with a documentation comment

Print the area with a descriptive comment

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Adding comments and documentation helps teams understand code quickly and maintain it easily over time.

💼 Career

Clear comments and documentation are essential skills for software developers to communicate their code intent and logic.

1

Create the rectangle dimensions hash

Create a hash called rectangle with these exact keys and values: :width set to 10 and :height set to 5.

Ruby

# Create the rectangle hash with width and height
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Ruby hash syntax with symbols for keys, like { width: 10, height: 5 }.

2

Add a comment explaining the rectangle hash

Add a comment above the rectangle hash that says: # This hash stores the width and height of the rectangle.

Ruby

# Add a comment explaining the rectangle hash
rectangle = { width: 10, height: 5 }

Need a hint?

Comments in Ruby start with #. Place it on the line before the hash.

3

Write a method with a documentation comment

Write a method called area that takes one parameter rect. Add a comment above it that says: # Calculates the area of a rectangle given its dimensions. The method should return the product of rect[:width] and rect[:height].

Ruby

# Write the area method with a documentation comment
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define the method with def area(rect) and multiply the width and height inside.

4

Print the area with a descriptive comment

Add a comment that says # Print the area of the rectangle and then write a puts statement that prints the result of calling area(rectangle).

Ruby

# Add a comment and print the area of the rectangle
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use puts area(rectangle) to print the area. The comment should be right above it.