Gee, I hope the newbies don’t try this just to see what happens. If they
“succeed”, they might then try for the more concise, powerful form, which I
won’t post an example of.
I’m just a curmudgeon. My example wasn’t in Ruby, either. It’s really an
example of how to shoot yourself in the foot without Ruby.
Do you consider Ruby a good language for teaching people that haven’t
programmed yet? Just wondering.
I personally consider teaching programming in any language without a
REPL as Cruel and Unusual ™ torture. Compiler-wrestling is a skill of
much value, but should be kept out of introductory courses and put into
language-specific seminars, IMO.
Disclaimer: That’s from the position of a “victim” of having an
introductory course in (Borland Turbo) C, not an actual instructor.
Do you consider Ruby a good language for teaching people that haven’t
programmed yet? Just wondering.
Sorry for answering the question addressed not to me,
but I’m an aged professional programmer who programmed in many languages
and for a long time was a lecturer and trainer of OOP.
Compared to other programming languages Ruby has many attracting
features. It is clear in understanding, pure OO, lightweight and
elegant, pragmatic and powerful, cross-platform, was deriveded from good
parent languages, absorbed modern programming ideas, supports different
programming paradigms.
So Ruby is almost ideally suitable for students and teachers, and I
strongly recommend for beginner programmers to start with Ruby.
Do you consider Ruby a good language for teaching people that haven’t
programmed yet? Just wondering.
=20
I personally consider teaching programming in any language without a
REPL as Cruel and Unusual ™ torture. Compiler-wrestling is a skill of
