From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2010-04-06T06:46:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Novice school teacher seeking help in programming

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On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Hilary Bailey <my77elephants@gmail.com>wrote:

> I will like to know how to use programming languages to create a
> computer software. I was advised to start with Ruby. Half-way through
> 'Beginning Ruby From Novice to Professional', it refers to C and/or C++
> as fundamentals. HELP. What is a practical approach to learning how to
> create a computer software from scratch. I am in the the field of
> secondary education with some knowledge of Excel, Words and SPSS.
>
> Thanking you in advance for your response
>

You should think about whether you're wanting to learn enough programming to
solve some problems, or really get deep into it, understanding the internals
and implementation. If it's the former, then I wouldn't touch a low level
language. If the latter, then learning C would be good for your
understanding of computer science, and even Assembly from there would really
ground some of the things you do, all the way down to the hardware.

But it sounds like you're wanting to program for pragmatic reasons, so I'd
strongly suggest you don't go near C, to do anything nontrivial in C
requires a huge amount of time and knowledge, and C gets out of hand
quickly. Stick with Ruby.

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Hilary Bailey <my77elephants@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On pgs 296 and 297. There is not clarity as how to use the million of
> concepts. Someone recommended to abandon Ruby and go directly to Ruby on
> Rails, as it offers more flexibility while learning Ruby and also Rails.
>
>
If you're wanting to make a simple web app, then I'd suggest starting with
Sinatra, it is much easier to start with. If what you want to do is more
complex, then Rails is the way to go, it just takes a while to get the hang
of rails (or did for me, at least), Rails is almost a language in itself.
For Sinatra, I really enjoyed the peepcode screencast
https://peepcode.com/products/sinatra

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Aldric Giacomoni <aldric@trevoke.net>wrote:

> Hilary Bailey wrote:
> > What is a practical approach to learning how to
> > create a computer software from scratch.
>
> Write programs yourself. A good place to start is
> http://projecteuler.net/ especially because it may force you to do
> research online about whatever algorithms it may be talking about.
> Online research is important.
>

That's where I started ^_^ I also started with C, but recommend against it,
I think it is a miserable language that saps all the joy of programming. I
picked up Ruby, because C wasn't able to handle numbers large enough to
solve Project Euler problems, very glad I did.

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