From: MRH <mauriceroman@...>
Date: 2008-05-29T21:15:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Should I Learn Ruby as a First Language?

Hi Mike,

Thank you for this post.

> I usually lump beginner programmers into one of two categories, (i) those
> who want to become expert programmers for purposes of education,
> profession, or hobby, and (ii) those who are interested in learning how to
> program sufficiently enough to make work in their primary careers easier,
> but don't necessarilly have a specific interest in programming itself.

I am a category (i) ;)

> If you're of the former category, I would say it doesn't really matter what
> lanaguage you learn first since you will inevitably learn multiple
> languages anyways.

Yes, please see prior post. :)

> Remember that a master programmer is not someone who
> expertly understands the minutiae of any single language, but rather is
> someone who is proficient in many languages.

A-ha! I had assumed the contrary - this is great to know, and it makes
sense.

> That said, there are a lot of languages out there that are complicated or
> even cumbersome because they attempt to be sufficiently general as to allow
> any "style" of programming without enforcing too strict of rules as to what
> code should look like.  Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is C++,
> and to a lesser extent Perl.  I express caution in learning these languages
> as first languages, since, as a novice programmer you don't really have an
> intuition for what code should look like, and the language doesn't really
> help guide you in learning either.

I see

> Ruby is guilty of a similar phenomenon which, in this context, goes by the
> name of "expressiveness".  While Ruby is certainly my favorite language, I
> know that part of my appreciation for this expressiveness comes from over a
> decade of experience in other languages and being able to place Ruby in
> the context of this experience.
>
> In other words, I'm not really sure if Ruby is the best, or even a good
> language for beginners because I'm not sure how difficult it is to learn
> without the benefit of experience.  On the other hand, plenty of people
> have learned Ruby as their first language and have gone on to recommend it
> to others, so it's certainly possible, and probably not a bad choice
> either.

I will consider this.

> That said, keep in mind that Ruby is a bit unique compared to other popular
> languages.  For example, the idiom of using internal iterators and blocks
> as looping constructions (e.g., Enumerable#each) is unlike the usual
> approach of using a for loop and/or external iterator as you would use in
> C, C++, Java, or Python.  While I think Ruby's approach is better, it is
> not the norm in other languages.  Another example is Ruby's idiom of
> automatic allocation and deallocation of resources by passing them to code
> blocks (e.g., File#open).  In other languages, one typically has to
> explicitly deallocate the resource (close the file) and the code for
> writing this safely is not intuitive.

I get the gist of what you are saying. Will remember.

> This brings up another advantage/disadvantage of learning Ruby first: code
> safetyness.  One example of this is the resource allocation/deallocation
> idiom I mentioned above that ensures that resources are always properly
> cleaned up when the program is finished with their use.   Another is that
> most methods raise an exception upon encountering an error, forcing a
> program to abort is an unexpected error happens.
>
> Exceptions are good, and they're prominent in other languages (Java and
> Python) and behave, more or less in the same way.  Unfortunately some
> popular languages implement exceptions (C++ and Perl) but don't use them
> universally in library functions, and other languages (C) don't implement
> them at all.  In these languages, you must (or at least should) check
> return values of any function you call to make sure that the desired action
> performed successfully.  Often times people forget to do this, and the
> result is code that continues on ignoring error conditions, usually blowing
> up somewhere else where it's difficult to debug.
>
> So, while I regard these features as advantages of Ruby, they are, in some
> sense a disadvantage when you attempt to learn a different language that
> doesn't take care of these issues for you, as you must be diligent in
> taking care of them yourself and it's not something you're used to.

This resonates with my earlier research as well. Will also remember
this.

> Anyways, the crux of my advice is this:  Any language that you're
> enthralled by, and can't get enough of, is a good (first) language to
> learn.  On the other hand, any language that you find bewildering,
> confusing, or just plain unfun to learn is probably not a good first
> language candidate.  If you find youself becoming disinterested after
> spending a week or two learning whatever language you choose, skip it and
> move on to something else.  It may take a while to find the language that
> fits, but trial and error is better than giving up on programming
> entirely--especially when the language that clicks with you is right around
> the corner.

Will do.

Regards,

Maurice