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I personally love Ruby but as a beginner language, I have found people find it a lot harder to understand than say Python, C or Basic. Ruby has a lot of what lo
by benofsky 16y ago
I personally love Ruby but as a beginner language, I have found people find it a lot harder to understand than say Python, C or Basic. Ruby has a lot of what looks like "magic" syntax to an unfamiliar user. I would probably go with a different language.
Otherwise, very cool idea.
- bphogan 16y agoWe Rubyists tend to put on the wizards hat and wave the wand around. But Ruby can be procedural too, and a lot of times can look a bit like Basic. I like Chris Pine's book "Learn To Program" because it uses Ruby very simply to teach introductory programming. I have much respect for Python, but don't know it well enough yet to be comfortable. Would kids be frustrated by the whitespace / indenting?
- benofsky 16y agoYeah, that's a good point the whitespace thing would be very frustrating. I guess Ruby could definitely be written in an easy to understand way as long as it's kept to a strict definition of what should/shouldn't be used.
- eru 16y agoWhy should the whitespace be frustrating? It was never an issue for me, or anyone I know who gave it a try. The IDE that comes with Python (IDLE) is good enough to help you with the whitespace. And even in MS Notepad it should be fine. Closing parens without editor support is much more frustrating.
- dagw 16y agoThe only real time whitespace can get frustrating is if you happen to mix tabs and spaces in the same file. Unfortunately this is quite an easy mistake to make (depending on how your editor is set up) if you're new to programming and don't yet understand the difference between a bunch of whitespace character and a single tab character.