From: Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@...>
Date: 2006-06-12T07:19:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?

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You're asking for views on teaching a particular programming language to
high-schoolers. This may sound like the dumbest imaginable question, but
have you decided exactly why your students need to be studying a programming
language?

Are you trying to impart some early training to young people who are
thinking about pursuing careers as professional programmers? Are you
thinking of it as an adjunct to a math or science courses? Are you thinking
about orienting future businesspeople who will spend a lifetime programming
Word and Excel macros (aarrgh, where's my razor... I can't face that
future)? Are you thinking about people destined for technical careers for
whom some mild familiarity with scripting can be useful? Or have you smply
taken a personal interest in imparting some of your own joy of programming?

If you know your goals and your audience's goals, then the choice of
language(s) may be self-evident.

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:
>
> Howdy list,
>
> I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
> student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.
>
> This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
> However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
> she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
> (Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
> her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)
>
> If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
> of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.
>
> The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
> school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
> writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
> cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
> with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
> that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
> never been trained on Scheme.
>
> I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
> looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
> concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
> object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
> also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...
>
> So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
> think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
> highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
> environment available for Ruby (screencap:
> http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif)?
>
> The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
> Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
> of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
> the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
> thinggy.
>
> I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.
>
> Regards,
> Nick Evans
>
>

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