From: Vincent Manis <vmanis@...>
Date: 2011-04-13T10:30:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for beginners (was: Re: Hello)

OK, so here's another kick at the can. 

1. I would be willing to draft a `Totally New To Programming' page for ruby-lang.org, if there's sentiment that this would be a useful thing. 

2. tryruby.org is very meritorious, but doesn't really replace having Ruby on one's own machine. It gives you the experience of interacting with Ruby, but doesn't show you how to transfer that to writing and running programs on your own machine. 

3. An IDE for beginners should be relatively limited, with relatively few dingbats and gizmos to confuse. It should focus on offering basic editing facilities, along with the ability to write and run programs. Beginners don't need API documentation, though a Ruby reference card would probably be handy. 
Such an IDE should be something that can be included with the installers, and depend upon nothing else. Of course the model here is Python's IDLE, which IMHO isn't suitable for serious programming, but on the other hand is very useful for getting started with Python. I used to use it in all my Python courses, even with programmers who presumably knew other editors well. 

And that suggests using Tk as the GUI, because that's included in every Ruby distribution. So the one-click installers could thus incorporate a basic IDE that was at least useful enough to get people started. 

Is there any sentiment that this would all be a worthwhile effort? 

-- vincent