From: Brian McCallister <brianm@...>
Date: 2005-02-15T03:40:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Printing why's (poignant) guide to ruby


On Feb 14, 2005, at 1:10 PM, James G. Britt wrote:

>> As a noob to Ruby who was convinced to try it after reading why's
>> wonderful work, i will say that i find Ruby "harder" than Python.  To
>> call Python a "joke of a language" is pretty harsh by the way.

I prefer ruby, but am not convinced it is "better for learning" than 
python. Python and ruby are so similar linguistically that until you 
get to the nuances (preferring internal iteration, passing ~functions 
around is as common as in lisp, etc) they may as well be the same (to a 
newcomer to programming).

If you have trouble explaining blocks, though, wait until you go for 
list comprehensions!

Seriously, Python, Ruby, C, Java, Smalltalk, etc are all *great* 
languages. The *best* learn-to-program language/environment is probably 
Squeak, it is pretty much designed just for that, and oh yeah, is a 
pretty good Smalltalk implementation too ;-)

-Brian