From: Space Ship Traveller Date: 2010-03-16T08:22:39+09:00 Subject: Re: Why teach Ruby in the classroom? Dear Stuart, Thanks for these great points. It is a really key component of Ruby that you can start off with something simple and progress to more advanced concepts and techniques as you learn more. It is a very fluid growth. I was looking at this page about OpenJDK on Wikipedia > The implementation is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) with a linking exception, which exempts components of the Java class library from the GPL licensing terms. This seems to imply that the GPL applies to the core implementation, but not the Java Class Libraries. I'm not sure where this stands in terms of proprietary / free + open. Thanks for your comments and I will research it more. Kind regards, Samuel On 16/03/2010, at 2:39 AM, Stuart Ellis wrote: > On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:37 +0900, "Space Ship Traveller" > 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 > >