From: Mark Wilden <mark@...>
Date: 2008-05-29T04:54:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Should I Learn Ruby as a First Language?

On May 28, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Kyle Schmitt wrote:

> Learn C first.

As someone who learned UCSD Pascal first, and then went on to  
assembler, then C, I disagree. :)

You don't have to be able to overhaul an engine to ride on a train.  
You should always take the easiest way that fulfills your goals.

I was a Classical Studies major at university. People would always  
say, "Oh, I wish I'd learned Latin!" Idiots. :) Yeah, learning Latin  
will help you learn French, etc. But if you want to learn French, you  
should just learn French.

We only have a limited amount of time in our lives. Any time spent  
learning a bad language like C is time we can't spent learning  
something else - like how to write maintainable, well-tested code.

Taken to its logical extreme, you should really know how to design  
digital circuits before you jump into C. Would it make you a better  
Ruby programmer? Absolutely! What would make you an even better Ruby  
programmer, however, is learning Smalltalk or Scheme or TDD or Rails.  
Limited time means you can't learn everything. Make sure what you  
learn is actually useful.

Learning C means not learning something else.

///ark