Back in my self-guided coding days, I would have said that JavaScript was my native language. Though the initial learning curve was higher than that of Ruby or Python, I feel like all the syntactic breadcrumbs helped me to pay attention to the details of the code I was writing. It was great training for the idea that the computer only performs exactly the actions you instruct it to (and only if it’s all followed by a semi-colon).
As the culmination of my study of Object-Oriented Ruby, I decided to build a web scraper for TripAdvisor. I choose TripAdvisor primarily because it contains a wealth of information in a variety of levels. Each destination has numerous hotels, each hotel has numerous prices, etc. Since the primary goal of the project was to implement an object-oriented structure, it seemed like fertile ground for the process. I also wanted to create something that would be helpful to me and my wife as we plan our families vacations. TripAdvisor is a staple for our trip-planning process, once we know where we’re going. However, I always need some inspiration when I am looking for a place to go. TripadCLIsor takes the aspects of TripAdvisor that help you explore potential destinations and brings them into an easily searchable CLI.