Ruby for Kids?

[Kerry Stevenson]

I am wondering if there is a Ruby resource (book, web pages, whatever)
that would be suitable to teach a child who has never programmed
anything before. The pickaxe book, while a terrific resource, seems to
assume at least some basic knowledge of programming and language
syntax.

 

[Sebastian]

I am wondering if there is a Ruby resource (book, web pages, whatever)
that would be suitable to teach a child who has never programmed
anything before. The pickaxe book, while a terrific resource, seems to
assume at least some basic knowledge of programming and language
syntax.

"Learn To Progam"[1] from the Pragmatic Programmers might be a good
fit. While not specifically a Ruby book per se, it uses Ruby examples
to teach programming basics.

Sebastian

[1] http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/index.html

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I am wondering if there is a Ruby resource (book, web pages, whatever)
that would be suitable to teach a child who has never programmed
anything before. The pickaxe book, while a terrific resource, seems to
assume at least some basic knowledge of programming and language
syntax.

"Learn To Progam"[1] from the Pragmatic Programmers might be a good
fit. While not specifically a Ruby book per se, it uses Ruby examples
to teach programming basics.

Sebastian

[1] http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/index.html

How young are we talking here? I'm sure we've covered this adequately,
but for elementary school "kids" I'd recommend Logo over Ruby. But once
we are talking early teens, Ruby is probably a good choice, and "Learn
To Program" is probably not going to tax them too badly. I think I could
have handled "Learn To Program" at 13. Of course, I was earning my
living as a programmer when I was 19, so I may have been atypical.

 

[Mike]

You know, to be honest with you, I would start them off with something
more like PHP. It seems like younger kids like to do stuff with web
pages, and it might be fun.

IMHO, even if i'ts suggested to start playing with web pages, it's still
better for children to get used to a general-purpose and OOP language,
not a specialised one like PHP. Ruby (or even Java) can easily serve as
a toy tool for web-page-playing but later it'll be the solid a nd
"proper" ground for a deeper study of programing.

Mike Shock

 

[James Britt]

You know, to be honest with you, I would start them off with something
more like PHP. It seems like younger kids like to do stuff with web
pages, and it might be fun.

Be careful: Many locales have laws against just this sort of child abuse.

--
James Britt

"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing."
- A. Perlis

 

[Keith Nicholas]

what would be good is something like KPL
(http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/) but built around ruby

 

[Bil Kleb]

I am wondering if there is a Ruby resource (book, web pages, whatever)
that would be suitable to teach a child who has never programmed
anything before.

My 7 year old is enjoying /Learn to Program/,

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/

See also, http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

Later,

 

[Richard Conroy]

My 7 year old is enjoying /Learn to Program/,

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/

See also, http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

I had a flick through Chris Pine's book and I do like it. (Girlfriend & Dad have
expressed interests in programming - they didn't see that Christmas
present coming)

I have one thing to say though - you could be setting their expectations
artificially high. Some of the pleasure I get from writing Ruby is because
my background is in the commercial languages. I can appreciate what
Ruby gives me.

 

[gga]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky ha escrito:

I am wondering if there is a Ruby resource (book, web pages, whatever)
that would be suitable to teach a child who has never programmed
anything before. The pickaxe book, while a terrific resource, seems to
assume at least some basic knowledge of programming and language
syntax.

"Learn To Progam"[1] from the Pragmatic Programmers might be a good
fit. While not specifically a Ruby book per se, it uses Ruby examples
to teach programming basics.

Sebastian

[1] http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_ltp/index.html

How young are we talking here? I'm sure we've covered this adequately,
but for elementary school "kids" I'd recommend Logo over Ruby. But once
we are talking early teens, Ruby is probably a good choice, and "Learn
To Program" is probably not going to tax them too badly. I think I could
have handled "Learn To Program" at 13. Of course, I was earning my
living as a programmer when I was 19, so I may have been atypical.

For what it is worth, I'd recommend just Ruby and "Learn to Program" as
excellent from the excerpts I just read.
As a background: I learned programming as a kid and I *DID* try Logo
which I found extremely frustrating and limiting (this was in primary
school, age 8 or so) compared to BASIC, which I had already learned on
my own. The kidslanguage someone else suggested is BASIC, done
Microsoft style, which is WAY too verbose compared to ruby.

Now, one of the most boring things about programming books is that they
have exercises and those exercises are usually plainly boring.

To keep a kid interesting in programming.... one sure thing will do it:
games. The cooler, the better.

My suggestion:

Download SDL/OpenGL for ruby. I'm sure you'll be able to find some
games for them somewhere. Do NOT show the game to your kid. Now, I'll
tell what to do with it. But I'll tell you why first...

The way I learned how to code was by typing in code taken from
magazines which contained games written in BASIC (there, I just dated
myself , as you could not buy software in my time where I lived, but
you could buy magazines that had code in them.
You can obviously not do that now, but you CAN download some games, go
through their source code and introduce some bugs in them. Then give
them to your kid to fix the code.
Not only will he learn how to debug code (and learn how to program in
the process), but he'll love it, as in the end he'll have a working
game to entertain himself with.

As for web stuff... ruby can do it and WAY better than PHP. Your kid
won't miss it.

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

what would be good is something like KPL
(http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/) but built around ruby

[...]

"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing."
- A. Perlis

=> "Gah! Programming sucks!" }

The only language that ever changed the way I thought about programming
was LISP 1.5.

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Are you sure? I learned more from every language since Lisp that
changed my way about thinking. It has been a lot *harder* to find
these languages, though...

I'm pretty sure -- I was there. But seriously, I started out as a
macro assembly language programmer, then learned FORTRAN. APL certainly
would have changed the way I thought about programming had I been in a
position to learn and use it. But I wasn't, and the next language I
learned was Lisp 1.5. After that, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot
new. FORTH maybe, except that I pretty much view FORTH as a convoluted
macro assembler.

The two languages I wish I had learned were APL and Smalltalk. I suppose
I could still learn Smalltalk, but Ruby seems a lot easier to use -- the
Squeak environment, for example, is hopelessly complicated, not to
mention visually garish. And APL seems to have vanished from the planet.
The kind of people who used to use APL, finance geeks, now use R, which
I *do* know.

 

[Martin DeMello]

The two languages I wish I had learned were APL and Smalltalk. I suppose
I could still learn Smalltalk, but Ruby seems a lot easier to use -- the
Squeak environment, for example, is hopelessly complicated, not to
mention visually garish. And APL seems to have vanished from the planet.
The kind of people who used to use APL, finance geeks, now use R, which
I *do* know.

J and K seem to be the current children of APL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_programming_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_(programming_language)

martin

 

[Simen Edvardsen]

I didn't intent to question LISP 1.5, but the significance it made.
Say, compared to Scheme, LISP 1.5 is not that world-changing, is it?

Scheme came after Lisp 1.5.

 

[Luciano Ramalho]

I am a 15 year old. I say Ruby is perfect for kids. Learn to Program is a
fine Ruby book. It help me get off the ground where no other programming
language/book successfully did me in.

Congratulations, Han Dao!

Beside, I am doing game development with Ruby now

Which library do you use? Ruby/SDL, RUDL or another one?

Cheers,

Luciano

 

[znmeb]

Scheme came after Lisp 1.5.

And I think roughly the same time as the move to integrate the other Lisp
dialects into what became Common Lisp. Curiously enough, there was a brief and
little-known "Lisp 2", with essentially Lisp 1.5 semantics but an Algol-like
(BNF) syntax. Lisp 2 went absolutely nowhere; by that time, the Algol family
was perfectly capable of handling Lisp-like data structures and semantics on
its own.

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

I am a 15 year old. I say Ruby is perfect for kids. Learn to Program is a
fine Ruby book. It help me get off the ground where no other programming
language/book successfully did me in.

Beside, I am doing game development with Ruby now

Cool, keep it up and you become really dangerous when you are 20
what kind of game are you making?