My name is Tom Swokowski (@tomswokowski) and I created CrackedRuby to help myself learn Ruby. Over the past two years, I've worked through several Ruby books and courses in an attempt to learn the language. For the most part, these resources are very high quality and provide great value. However, all of them could use a few more practice problems to really help cement the concepts of Ruby.
CrackedRuby provides over 1,600 independent practice exercises that cover most areas of the Ruby programming language. The exercises are organized into 20 different main categories, such as Ruby Fundamentals, Object Oriented Programming, Metaprogramming, and so on.
Each of the categories has a number of topics under them and there are 161 total topics across the 20 categories. For example, under the Ruby Fundamentals category, topics include Variables, Data Types, Control Flow and more.
Then, within each topic, there are 10 interactive coding challenges called lab questions that range from beginner to advanced.
There are also a number of "drills" that can be completed. The drills differ slightly from the lab questions in that they are more practical exercises that you might come across in the real world. For example, you'll get a text file and be tasked with extracting some contact information from it and writing it to another file. These are designed to show you how Ruby can be used in the real world for various everyday purposes.
On CrackedRuby, you'll spend most of your time completing challenges in the interactive coding environment.
You'll be given a problem, instructions, hints, starter code, and test cases for that problem. You'll write the Ruby code right on the app and can run your code whenever you want as you work to solve each problem. Your code gets saved as you work so your progress isn't lost and you can reset to the starter code at any point. Once you are ready, you can submit your solution which runs your code against the test cases. Any failures can be corrected and resubmitted until you pass all of the test cases. Once you pass all of the test cases, the problem is considered complete and you can move on to the next one. Your overall progress is saved and tracked.
In order to submit code and track your progress on CrackedRuby, you need to be signed in. Currently, the only options to sign in are via Google and GitHub. We use your email address as your account identifier, so whether you sign in with Google or GitHub, you'll access the same account as long as the email matches.
All of the 1,600+ lab questions and drills are free to view in their entirety without signing in. If you'd prefer to just copy the content to your own machine and run your code locally, you are more than welcome to do so. Some of the exercises require a subscription to run and submit your code, but again everything is available to view free of charge.
Depending on the platform's growth, I plan to invest more time and money into building new features that will help aspiring Ruby developers. You can follow me on X (@tomswokowski) or subscribe to the mailing list in your Account Settings to get the latest updates for CrackedRuby. Lastly, feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any questions or concerns. Good luck with whatever your goals are in 2026.
Thanks and take care,
Tom