From: Bill Guindon Date: 2006-05-15T10:57:28+09:00 Subject: Re: begining programmer questions On 5/14/06, corey konrad <0011@hush.com> 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. I started learning Ruby a couple of years ago, but I started programming somewhere around 1981. By the time I found Ruby, yeah, it sort of 'came naturally' to me. So yeah, some people are 'naturals', and it looks like you might be one of them. The part where it 'comes naturally' happens later. It's driving you nuts, but you still keep doing it. Why? You _must_ figure out what you are doing wrong. You _must_ find a way to make it do what you want. To me, that sounds like a 'natural' ;) Since nobody's mentioned it (I think), most Ruby users are coming from other languages. Granted, that can be true for many languages, but I think the ratio is higher for Ruby. Until Rails, it was relatively unknown in the US. Certainly far below perl, Java, PHP, Python, etc. Most of the people (like myself) who looked into Ruby were already programmers, and probably knew more than one language. That's part of all the 'Ruby is wonderful' hype. It may take experience with other languages to see that part. I'm not saying it's not a good language to learn first, I have no idea if it is or not, I don't think enough people (US at least) have learned it as their first language to decide that case. What I'm saying is, once you learn another language (after you learn Ruby that is), then you're more likely to see the 'beauty' that is Ruby. On the bright side, once 'it clicks', and you get Ruby (or any other language for that matter), learning other languages becomes easier. Personally, I think that once you've learned 3 languages, you'll be convinced that you can learn any language. > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. You might as well just sign up for the list, it's your destiny ;) http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020104.html -- Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla) The best answer to most questions is "it depends".