From: Stuart Ellis <stuart@...>
Date: 2010-03-15T22:39:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Why teach Ruby in the classroom?

On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:37 +0900, "Space Ship Traveller"
<space.ship.traveller@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thats odd - the link has been stripped out.
> 
> Why teach Ruby in schools? - Orion Transfer Ltd
> http://www.oriontransfer.co.nz/education/learn-ruby/why/index
> 
> Kind regards,
> Samuel

One thing that might be relevant is the way that Ruby seems to enable a
fairly smooth progression in scale and sophistication. You can start
with simple one-liners and single file scripts and move on to larger
structured applications in a more or less incremental way, and stop at
whatever level is comfortable. The fact that Ruby can be used at a
simple level probably doesn't hold back learners later - they don't have
to switch tools or relearn existing knowledge if they want to progress
on to advanced techniques.

It's worth checking the claim in the Evaluation section that Java is
essentially proprietary - I don't really follow Java development, but
Linux distributions definitely now use an official version that passes
Open Source criteria (it's branded as OpenJDK).

FWIW, the RailsBridge community has several people who use Ruby for
teaching, and there's some discussion on the Google group:

http://teachingkids.railsbridge.org/
http://groups.google.com/group/railsbridge
--

Stuart Ellis