These two examples are what I mean when I say learn to program. The first is the upper limits of knowledge, and the second is pretty much all an average journalist needs to know. If you can read the second you probably have all the knowledge a journalist needs. The bottom would take about a sum total of a week of study to learn. The top one take…

advanced.rb

require 'thread'
require 'csv'
require 'net/http'
require 'json'

id = 0
max_id = 30

class Atomic
  def initialize(val)
    @value = val
    @m = Mutex.new
  end

  def get
    @m.synchronize { @value }
  end

  def update
    true and Thread.pass until compare_and_set old = get, new_value = yield(old)
    new_value
  end

  def compare_and_set(old, new_val)
    return false unless @m.try_lock
    begin
      return false unless @value.equal? old
      @value = new_val
    ensure
      @m.unlock
    end
    true
  end
end

def get(id)
  uri  = URI("https://api.github.com/legacy/repos/search/twitter?start_page=#{id}")
  http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
  http.use_ssl = true
  http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
  resp = http.get(uri.request_uri).body
  JSON.parse(resp)
end

csv = CSV.open("./github.csv", "wb")
lock = Mutex.new
atomic = Atomic.new(id)
headers = get(1)['repositories'][0].keys
csv << headers

5.times.map { |i|
  Thread.new do |t|
    c = 0
    loop do
      c += 1
      id = atomic.update { |v| v + 1 }
      break if id >= max_id
      json = get(id)
      next unless json
      arr  = json['repositories'].map {|it| headers.map {|h| it[h] } }
      lock.synchronize {  csv << arr; puts "#{id}, #{i}: #{c}" }
    end
  end
}.map(&:join)

csv.close

simple.rb

require 'csv'
require 'net/http'
require 'json'

id = 0
max_id = 30

def get(id)
  uri  = URI("https://api.github.com/legacy/repos/search/twitter?start_page=#{id}")
  http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
  http.use_ssl = true
  http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
  resp = http.get(uri.request_uri).body
  JSON.parse(resp)
end

csv = CSV.open("./github.csv", "wb")
headers = get(1)['repositories'][0].keys
csv << headers

id = 0
loop do
  id += 1
  break if id >= max_id
  json = get(id)
  next unless json
  arr  = json['repositories'].map {|it| headers.map {|h| it[h] } }
  csv << arr 
end

csv.close