While I haven’t picked out a specific programming to language to learn yet, I have been investigating either turning to Ruby or PHP. For the former, at least for the moment anyway, I’m currently tasked with coming up with a prototype system to be used as part of the gamification of the upcoming Humanities Unbound conference.

For that, I’m combining not only the Twitter Bootstrap template, but the TwitterOAuth library to make a site where people can login using their Twitter account and authorize the app (site) to keep track of the points they earn through doing different things during the conference like taking selfies and tweeting during the various talks.

As for the former, Ruby, it has been a language I have been meaning to spend more time with for years now. Ever since Rails came out and became extremely popular in web development circles, Ruby has become a language to be familiar with if not outright highly competent in for general work. Of course, since I’m not “in” the community as much as I used to be, it is not as much of a problem as it could be.

Still, since I’m leaning into making something with a web development angle as part of the assignment, Ruby could conceivably be a great choice. Not only would it give me some development tools for making sites again, I would have to “start over” with a brand new ecosystem and community ruless. Potentially, anyway, it holds the greatest promise of both learning a new language and making something web related.