ola_manunited.rb

scores = "Manchester United 1 Chelsea 0, Arsenal 1 Manchester United 1, Manchester United 3 Fulham 1, Liverpool 2 Manchester United 1, Swansea 2 Manchester United 4"

games_won = 0
games_lost = 0
games_drawn = 0

goals_scored = 0
goals_conceded = 0

scores_array = scores.split(",")

#usually in ruby you use the bracket-notation for blocks that are one-line long, and the do/end notation for blocks 
#that span multiple lines. For example:
#
#scores_array = scores_array.collect do |string|
#  string.split(" ") 
#end 

scores_array = scores_array.collect { |string|
  string.split(" ") 
  } 
  
  
scores_array.each { |array| 
  
  #what you've done here isn't bad, and it works(!)
  
  #The problems are as follows:
  
  #1) You had to account for the fact that man united isn't always listed first in the input.
  #so basically you made an if/else to determine which score belonged to which team. The problem
  #with that is that now you have all of this duplicate logic in both the if and the else blocks. 
  #Ideally, you only want to do all your tallying of scores in ONE place. Ideally, any logic patterns
  #that appear in your code should only ever appear ONCE, and then be reused.
  
  #2) The real problem here though is the readability of your code. All that array[2] > array[4] crap is 
  #pretty hard to interpret. Its certainly not intuitive what this code is doing unless you go back and 
  #read the input. The most important facet of good code is **READABILITY**. It should be self-evident 
  #what every line is doing. Comments should be almost unnecessary.
  
  #Imagine coming back to this in a year and having to fix some part of it (or being another person 
  #who'se never seen this code before). You would have to re-read the entire thing to begin to get 
  #your footing with what this code does.
  
  
  if array[0] == "Manchester" 
    goals_scored += array[2].to_i
    goals_conceded += array[4].to_i  
    if array[2] > array[4]
      games_won += 1
    elsif array[2] == array[4]
      games_drawn += 1
    else
      games_lost += 1
    end
  else
    goals_scored += array[4].to_i
    goals_conceded += array[1].to_i
    if array[4] > array[1]
      games_won += 1
    elsif array[4] == array[1]
      games_drawn += 1
    else
      games_lost += 1  
    end
  end 
  }
  
  points = games_won * 3 + games_drawn
  
  puts "number of wins = #{games_won}"
  puts "number of draws = #{games_drawn}"
  puts "number of defeats = #{games_lost}"
  puts "goals scored = #{goals_scored}"
  puts "goals conceded = #{goals_conceded}"
  puts "number of points = #{points}"