Re: ruby and C

On 4/23/07, smc smc <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Would it be easier to learn ruby if i knew C/C+/C++ or the other way
> around?



Are you looking to have fun, or to acquire marketable skills? If you're
tempted to say "both," you should probably think a little harder because the
answer differs.

If you want to have fun, learn C, then C++, then Ruby. Nothing is more fun
than understanding what you're doing at a deep level, and building on that
foundation to learn higher-level things. I learned assembler before I
learned C before I learned C++ (and have been a professional at all of them,
where "professional" is defined as "getting paid consistently for doing
it"). But before I ever approached computers, I learned how to design
digital logic at the hardware level (gates, circuits, voltage regulators,
all of it). Then when I first looked at assembly languages, they made
complete and intuitive sense from the first minute. Needless to say, my
reaction to C was "Wow, what a high-level language this is!" I never had
conceptual trouble with pointers because I know exactly what they mean at
the electronic level.

It's a different question if you're looking for marketable skills (although
taste plays a big role because you need to ask yourself what you will
actually enjoy working with every day).

It's been long predicted, but we may finally be starting to see a split
between hard-core systems programmers (for which the demand is really rather
low), script-level coders, and "business" analysts who probably won't ever
write a line of code at all. As the economics of software development
change, these layers may become more clearly delineated and less permeable
in the marketplace. I think Ruby has helped drive this change because it
really is becoming more possible to cut together significant and valuable
applications from system-level pieces using scripting. (Java tries to do
this at the library level, less successfully, although the terrific amount
of effort that goes into the attempt shows you that the principle at work is
a compelling one.)

So if you want to be in the middle layer (probably the mainstream going
forward), there's nothing wrong with learning Ruby first. You would do well
to learn Java too (though I'm hesitant to recommend that, not because of
inherent problems with Java but rather because most Java pedagogy is of the
mindless, cookbook variety.)

Flame away. I can anticipate objections to this argument in two basic forms:
1) "What you're talking about hasn't happened yet, therefore it won't happen
in the future," and 2) "Language XYZ is the best language in the world [for
some local definition of "best"] and therefore everyone should learn it
first!" I'll be very interested in hearing any counterarguments that are not
isomorphic to one of these.