From: Giles Bowkett <gilesb@...>
Date: 2006-06-13T04:37:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Highschoolers?

> I think that Ruby is an excellent vehicle for teaching programming. I have a
> couple of suggestions:
>
> 1) Get a copy of "Learn To Program" by Chris Pine. It does precisely what
> you want to do: teach programming using Ruby. You should easily be able to
> build a curriculum from the material in this book. You can find it here:
>
>    http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/index.html
>
> 2) If you use the One-Click Ruby Installer for Windows (
> http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/), it includes the FreeRIDE IDE (
> http://freeride.rubyforge.org/).
>
> Good luck!

I just want to second this. I definitely think Ruby is a useful
language to teach beginning programming. It's real-world enough that
you might use it for practical purposes further down the line and it's
easy enough that the kids will think about "what can I do with this?"
instead of just freaking out over the details.

a friend in his early 20s was taking a Java class, I told him drop out
and get "Learn to Program" instead. I definitely endorse that
approach.

-- 
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org