From: Logan Capaldo Date: 2006-05-15T08:53:34+09:00 Subject: Re: begining programmer questions On May 14, 2006, at 7:33 PM, corey konrad wrote: > this stuff is discouraging, lol. Since i started learning to program i > feel like i am mentally retarded or something. Is it normal to have > this > many problems with understanding simple things when you learn this > stuff, for some people it seems to just come naturally like they were > born into it. > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > There's a _big_ hump the first time you learn to program. Once it clicks though, a whole bunch of other stuff becomes easier. I don't know if ruby is necessarily the best programming language for a beginner either, since it was designed by Matz. for Matz. (And I'm pretty sure Matz. isn't a beginning programmer). The problem is I can't think of a better one. Every language out there has it's own quirks that are detrimental to the learning of how to just program, for the very first time. I think someone should write a procedural language with a simple, forgiving syntax (i.e. whitespace is not significant, and as few funny characters as possible), with garbage collection and dynamic typing. Kind of a subset of perl with a ruby- like syntax. It should also have a very rich runtime introspection capabilities, not necessarily for the students, so that you can step through code and have the data structures visualized( sort of like [1] but they should be shown more like a diagram out of a text book). [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/