From: Chris Pine <cpine@...>
Date: 2005-03-25T16:20:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby newbie: 3 week learning project

James Edward Gray II wrote:
 > Yes, the Pickaxe is written for experienced programmers,
 > in my opinion.  It assumes you have a good amount of
 > knowledge going in, like a fair grasp of object oriented
 > programing.

I tried to write my tutorial as sort of a bridge between being a total 
non-programmer and being ready for the Pickaxe.  It might be too easy 
for you at first, but on the other hand, I've gotten a lot of positive 
feedback from programmers and non-programmers alike.  Plus, several 
people I don't even know recommended it on 43 things; it warmed my 
heart!  Anyway, here 'tis:

  http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

Basically, it's a tutorial assuming no prior programming knowledge, 
building one concept at a time, and focussing on learning only one way 
to do things.  (You can learn the other ways from the Pickaxe, but I've 
found that new users don't want to know all 7 ways to declare a 
string.)  All of the examples are live code, with scripted input being 
fed in as necessary, and the output is captured, formatted, and 
displayed right there.  So you know the examples really work.  (In fact, 
if you reload the pages using the random number or current time 
examples, the output changes each time.  How cool is that?  :)  I even 
left in some of my mistakes, so you can see real error messages from 
real mistakes, and you can see how I dealt with them.

Anyway, I just thought I should mention it.

Welcome to Ruby!

Chris