Look, two podcasting utilities on Rubyforge already: podcatcher and rpodder. This is a glad omen. Both of these utilities watch feeds and pull down audio files. This is the sort of program that is a good starting place for someone learning Ruby. Interesting enough to captivate a teenager, challenging enough to make it compelling.

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be taught in high schools. Give kids a list of podcast feeds (perhaps in OPML like podcatcher does) and help them write a script to download those files and build a playlist. It might even be useful for us to have a Ruby learning site that just has a few simple tutorials like that.

So, if you’re wondering what Ruby is for, here’s a reason. To take something off the Internet and shape it to your own use.