Why teach Ruby in the classroom?
in [Ruby]
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From: Robert Klemme on 15 Mar 2010 05:13 2010/3/15 Space Ship Traveller <space.ship.traveller(a)gmail.com>: > 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 I think the first item in the list is a very important one! I am missing these items in your list: - Ruby is a fully object oriented language - there are no hybrid constructs like Java's plain old datatypes, instead everything is an object. - Ruby can be used consistently with a variety of programming paradigms: procedural, object oriented class based, object oriented prototype based, functional etc. So you need only one language to cover several areas and you can even implement the same task in different paradigms in the same program to make comparison of paradigms simple. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm Kind regards robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/
From: Space Ship Traveller on 15 Mar 2010 07:01 Dear Robert, These points are fantastic. This is a great contrast to many other languages. I have added these points in, the first under comprehension, and the second under evaluation. Again, I really appreciate these ideas. Kind regards, Samuel On 15/03/2010, at 10:13 PM, Robert Klemme wrote: > I think the first item in the list is a very important one! I am > missing these items in your list: > > - Ruby is a fully object oriented language - there are no hybrid > constructs like Java's plain old datatypes, instead everything is an > object. > > - Ruby can be used consistently with a variety of programming > paradigms: procedural, object oriented class based, object oriented > prototype based, functional etc. So you need only one language to > cover several areas and you can even implement the same task in > different paradigms in the same program to make comparison of > paradigms simple. > > see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm > > Kind regards > > robert
From: Stuart Ellis on 15 Mar 2010 09:39 On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:37 +0900, "Space Ship Traveller" <space.ship.traveller(a)gmail.com> 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
From: Space Ship Traveller on 15 Mar 2010 19:22
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" > <space.ship.traveller(a)gmail.com> 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 > > |