From: wenas agusetiawan <luckynas@...>
Date: 2006-06-12T07:53:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?

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Hi,

I do not think that teaching ruby is a good idea because they will get used
to built-in function and built-in function without even be able to
understand how something is built ( design patterns and etc ), IMHO learning
what is programming better than what is programming language

On 6/11/06, Jeff Dik <s450r1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
> >
> >
>
>

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