From: Chris Pine <glyconis@...>
Date: 2005-04-14T03:49:04+09:00
Subject: Re: On motivating a Ruby nubie

> Has anyone thought about founding a "Ruby nubie" mailing list or
> creating nubie-sized short-tutorials, quizzes and challenges?

Well, I did create a tutorial especially for nubies (people who have
never programmed in *any* language, I mean).  You might want to check
it out:

 http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

It starts very gently, and has lots and lots of examples.  Also, the
examples are all guaranteed correct:  the code samples are run every
time you request the webpage!  (So you can reload the random number
examples and see different outputs, for example.)  In fact, the whole
tutorial is actually being generated by a Ruby program.  It seemed
appropriate.  :)

As far as motivation is concerned, I must admit that I have the
opposite problem:  I'm notivated in for more directions that I have
time to work on!  I think that, for me, it's a matter of taking any
tedious aspect in my life, and trying to see how programming could
help do that for me.  At first, perhaps it's harder to see what
aspects of your life could be made easier by programming, but with
practice you'll start to see things all over.  Right now I am:

- updating our website, all of the pages of which are generated by
Ruby  (why not just write the html?  because the pages are
automatically updated every time we add new pictures to our site,
which we do daily, so writing it Ruby has already saved us countless
hours of work (it generates thumbnail, too))
- writing a program to turn vaguely-logo-like instructions into a nice
truetype programmer's font (monospaced, no 0-O confusion, etc)  and
it's almost done!  you'll never "courier new" again!
- writing a music-organizing program so I can say things like "Play me
some upbeat jazz and lounge, but only stuff I haven't listened to
recently, but after two hours or so, tone it down to some mellow,
instrumental lounge... with a sprinkling of Stereolab"
- writing an interpreter for a language I have been playing with...
certainly no Ruby competitor, but it's been an unparalleled learning
experience
- writing a book on Ruby

So those last two aren't really saving me any time... they are more
just for fun.  I don't know what to tell you about those... hopefully,
once you learn more Ruby and use it to save yourself time, and you
have fun doing it, you might be motivated toward more "just for fun"
projects.

Best of luck, in any case,

Chris