From: Jeff Dik <s450r1@...>
Date: 2006-06-12T07:38:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?

Ruby and Scheme are both beautiful languages.

I think Ruby would be an excellent choice for a first programming
language.  You don't need to know a lot of concepts to get started
programming in it, but it's also a very rich language.  I'm tempted to
say that Ruby will grow with you, meaning not that Ruby will gather
more and more syntax with age, but that as you become a better
programmer, you'll discover other areas or ideas in that language that
you have yet to explore.

However, as you know Ruby but not Scheme, I'd recommend that you
advantage of the opportunity to learn Scheme.  You'll probably find
that it will make you a better programmer in Ruby, as well.

Jeff

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
>
>