From: Vincent Manis Date: 2011-04-13T00:08:10+09:00 Subject: Re: Hello On 2011-04-12, at 07:29, Phillip Gawlowski wrote: > On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 3:27 PM, James Nathan wrote: >> No, I will try another program to learn to write a program. Ruby is just to hard to download, and to work with. >> thanks for all your help and understanding. >> James Nathan > Anyway, how, in your opinion, can we make it easier for you to get > started? IOW, what do you expect to have, when you download a Ruby > installer? I'm sorry we weren't able to give you what you needed, James. I do wish you luck in learning about programming. This does bring up an issue. I would like to see www.ruby-lang.org have a page `Totally new to programming', with appropriate resources; this page would be prominently linked to on the front page. It would have a paragraph or so on what Ruby is, along with what the installers do, along with a few resources that would help a total beginner get started. I can visualize many interactions like this. A: You're a programmer, can you tell me how I can learn programming? B: Try Ruby, it's a great way of getting started. A: What do I do? B: Well, go to www.ruby-lang.org, and they have all the information you need. Unfortunately, that isn't really good enough for somebody who has no framework to see what all the various pieces are. So one page that says `here's what Ruby is, here's what an installer is, here's how you get Ruby running on your computer, and here's what you should read to get started with Ruby' would be a tremendous resource for beginners. I'm not claiming that the information isn't out there, just that it isn't in a form that a true beginner can use. When I used to do software engineering training for a company I used to work for, one of the more popular courses I ran was called `Programming for Non-Programmers', aimed at giving people exactly that framework. A lot of beginners get stuck there, and can't easily move forward without a bit of help. -- vincent