From: Brian Cowdery Date: 2006-08-09T07:54:11+09:00 Subject: Re: Newbie questions manowarrior wrote: > Hello, > I'm new to programming at all... and I suck at maths. Plus, I'm 16 > years old. > My questions are: > 1) Is Ruby a good language to start with? Ruby is a relativly simplistic and forgiving language, which fortuantly makes it easy to learn - but unfortunatly the flexibility allows for some really bad programming habits to develop. I'd suggest starting out with somthing like C or Java, go through a few introductory books and tutorials and learn about inheritance and proper programming structures (shouldn't take more than a few days). Then start looking at Ruby for some instant gratification. > 2) Do I need lots of math to become a good programmer? No, but it helps. Most programmers deal with information these days, processing, moving and manipulating. The math comes in on the technical side when your dealing with hardware and the more low level stuff. If you understand basic algebra you should be fine. On a side note, lots of college and university courses will put you through things like Statistics and Linear Algebra because they really help you understand how computers work, and how to take the shortest route to an answer (the goal of any good programmer). > 3) What tutorial or a book will you suggest me, if you think that I can > start learning? With ruby theres really only 1 good book "Programming Ruby" but its not the easiest of read. Take a look into any of the Pragmatic Programmer series of books, there fun and easier to read than anything else ive found. > Thank you. > I hope this message is not spam for your newsgroup. No problem, news groups are for answering questions like this, and i doubt your the only one who will find this useful =P -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.