learn-co-curriculum / phase-3-iterators-and-abstraction-ruby

Iterators and Abstraction

Notice that the details of the bull are removed and the image is still identifiably a bull.
— Pablo Picasso, on Abstraction.

Objectives

1. Understand the concept of iteration
2. Understand simple iteration or looping
3. Get an introduction to complex iteration

Iteration vs. Looping

In previous readings we discussed the four loop types, loop, times, while, and until. Now we're going to discuss the difference between looping and iteration. Looping occurs when you tell your program to do something a certain number of times. Iteration occurs when you have a collection of data (for example, an array), and you operate on each member of that collection.

For example, if I tell my program to print out the phrase "I love programming!" five times, that's looping. If I tell my program to enumerate over the array [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and add 10 to each number, that's iteration.

loop - The Least Abstract

Let's talk about the algorithm required to go through all the individual items in a set.

Imagine having a basket with ten (10) apples in it. What would you need to do to make sure that you took out all of the apples? You might think that it's enough to take an apple out of the basket one at a time. But that's not necessarily complete—at a certain point there will be no more apples in the basket; you will need to keep track of that or else you might never stop reaching in for more apples. The solution turns out to be a little more complex than it seemed at first; it might look like something like this:

1. Keep track of how many apples there are in the basket.
2. Keep track of how many apples you have taken out of the basket.
3. Start a loop.
4. If the count of apples you take out is less than the count of apples originally in the basket, take one out and increment the count of apples taken out by one.
5. If the count of apples taken out is NOT less than the count of apples originally in the basket, then break out of the loop.

This will ensure that we take out all the apples and never reach into the basket once it's been emptied of apples.

In Ruby, we might implement the above pseudocode into our code similar to this:

basket = ["apple 1","apple 2","apple 3","apple 4","apple 5","apple 6","apple 7","apple 8","apple 9","apple 10"]

apples_in_basket = basket.size # Step 1
apples_taken_out = 0 # Step 2

loop do # Step 3
    if apples_taken_out < apples_in_basket 
        # Step 4
        puts "Taking out #{basket[apples_taken_out]}"
        apples_taken_out += 1
    else
        # Step 5
        break
    end
end

So that's the least abstract implementation of the algorithm. All the details are there, every step is accounted for explicitly in the code. We won't change the algorithm, we'll just look at more abstract implementations.

while - A Little More Abstract

The goal of abstraction is to remove details.

basket = ["apple 1","apple 2","apple 3","apple 4","apple 5","apple 6","apple 7","apple 8","apple 9","apple 10"]

apples_in_basket = basket.size # Step 1
apples_taken_out = 0 # Step 2

# Step 3 + 4
while apples_taken_out < apples_in_basket
    puts "Taking out #{basket[apples_taken_out]}"
    apples_taken_out += 1
end

What we did here first was combine two steps 3 and 4 into a while loop—initializing a cycle of behavior based upon a condition, which is what the word while means both in Ruby and in English. Abstraction didn't make our code less clear, it rather made our code "absolutely precise". Brevity for the sake of brevity is silly, but our goal is to always express ourselves as clearly and honestly as possible. Because our loop is conditional from the start by using the while loop construct, we don't need to explicitly break out of it; this makes step 5 implicit.

each - The Most Abstract

Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague.... The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
— Edsger Dijkstra

basket = ["apple 1","apple 2","apple 3","apple 4","apple 5","apple 6","apple 7","apple 8","apple 9","apple 10"]

# Step 1,2,3,4,5 as one, abstractly
basket.each do |apple|
  puts "Taking out #{apple}"
end

Here we see the full power of the Ruby iterators. To quote Kent Beck, "you don't use 3-4 lines to express iteration, you use one word." If you mean each apple, just say each apple. All the details of the algorithm are removed and replaced with the intention of our code, not the implementation of the algorithm.

Don't worry if you're not fully grasping each. We'll cover this more in depth in subsequent lessons.