From: Josh Charles <josh.charles@...>
Date: 2005-10-11T22:20:00+09:00
Subject: Re: my mother wants to code?

I taught myself everything, and I started with QBasic. I know, but it
was a good place to start, and it made me really appreciate the finer
languages once I figured out how to move on to them.  So am I
recommending that she start with Qbasic?  Not really.  But an
intrepreted language where she can see quick results is probably a
good idea.  Python is the first that leaps to mind, but I've not
worked with it extensively.  Ruby is really expressive, but I don't
know if I would have been able to pick it up if I didn't understand
some programming basics first.

Perhaps some simple shell scripting?  That's a handy skill to have anyway.

For some reason, the more I think about this, the more I lean back to
some form of basic as a starting point.  Before I start getting
flamed, hear me out.  The entire point of the language was to make it
easy for the lay person to write something that works.  Once a basic
understanding of things like variables, functions, and basic
algorithms are learned, it's easy to translate that into other
languages and more advanced work.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents that will probably get flamed to hell, but
to hell with it.

On 10/11/05, junk5@microserf.org.uk <junk5@microserf.org.uk> wrote:
> > She has no computer experience, but she is surrounded with programmers
> > (three sons and a husband) and she wants to be able to understand what
> > we are talking about.
> [Snip]
> > My little brother is busy teaching her Java but I feel Ruby is the
> > better (friendlier, more productive) language.
>
> I don't think the main issue here is language advocacy. I think it's
> that "too many cooks will spoil the broth". If your mother is getting
> conflicting advice from two (or possibly four) people, she's going to
> get confused. I would, wouldn't you?
>
> It's possible to learn to program in either Java or Ruby --- they both
> seem reasonable starter (and enterprise-ready) languages to me. There
> are more languages that have C-like syntax (C, C++, Java, C# etc.),
> while Ruby's syntax (which is nicer than C-like syntaxes IMHO) is less
> transferable. So if she wants to find employment, understanding C-like
> syntax will be useful.
>
> My advice would be to sit back and let your mother learn Java from just
> your brother. If she 'gets' programming in Java, she'll be able to get
> Ruby. If she doesn't get programming in Java, you might say to her "can
> I show you a different approach" and she might understand what all this
> programming stuff is about. But some people just don't seem to have
> that ability to abstract problems into code, in which case language
> choice won't matter.
>
> If she does get Java, once she's had a bit of experience ask if she'd
> like to see Ruby. If you can show her m lines of Ruby that does the
> same as n lines of Java, where m << n, for a range of common tasks, I
> bet she'll be a convert.
>
> But don't bombard her with a language war. It'll just put her off.
>
>
>