From: MRH <mauriceroman@...>
Date: 2008-05-30T02:24:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Should I Learn Ruby as a First Language?

On May 29, 7:21 am, Srijayanth Sridhar <srijaya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My two cents worth:
>
> Ruby is a good first language to learn if you are really really young
> and you are just learning something, because ruby is designed in a way
> that lets us apply regular thinking methods. If you are a child,
> 5.times do something makes more sense than for (i=0; ....). However,
> if you are a little older and are able to grasp concepts, then you
> might be better off learning C.
>
> One reason C is advantageous is it forces you to learn algorithms and
> the inner working of "methods" in ruby for instance. It is entirely
> possible for a person who has only learned ruby to never bother about
> how a sort is implemented. This may or may not matter to you in the
> end, but learning C, as someone else said earlier, really makes you
> appreciate Ruby, Java etc. Also, going from Ruby to C might be hard
> because it might seem like you are always writing code for tasks that
> are so trivial in Ruby. So I suggest you learn C first.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Jayanth

Hello Jayanth,

An interesting and helpful post, thank you. I did find a free online
book on Data Structures and Algorithms in Ruby . . . posted it to
Reddit Ruby, and some folks stated that it did not use idiomatic
Ruby . . . I am going to tackle that one anyway however.

Regards,

Maurice