META: Is Ruby a good language to choose as your first one to learn?

I'm somewhat intrigued by the source of this sort of question, and about
beliefs along the lines of "which language should I learn (first)?"

I'm sure there are lots of potential pitfalls to picking any computer
language to learn first, perhaps some more than others. But the first
computer language isn't really about learning that language so much as it
is about learning how to program: how to approach problems, how to break
things down, how to build things up, how to make sure what you've written
works, how to make sure you are solving the right problem, etc.

I can't really imagine any one language would actually be a bad choice to
start with, as long as one has support, and there is adequate
documentation. The great difficulty lies, I feel, in these other aspects of
programming.

One thing I see here and on other forums is the concern about picking the
one right language. This is a pink unicorn. There are so many languages,
and so many problem spaces, so many things that one can and probably should
learn, that what becomes even more important is learning how to learn new
languages, new libraries, new frameworks, new approaches, honing skills in
design and architecture, testing, deployment, and all the rest.

What actually concerns me most that seems inherent in the question is a
state of analysis paralysis -- just pick up one and go. Once you learn one,
it's easier to learn another, and another, and so on.

Robert Klemme wrote in post #1133642:

i. it's the foundation of many other languages; if you understand C,
it's pretty simply picking up most anything else like Jave, Obective-C,
C++, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.

That's like suggesting to learn physics if your intention is to
understand chemistry because physics is the basis. But that is not
needed when being introduced to chemistry. The abstractions provided
by chemistry work pretty well by themselves.

No, it's not Robert. It's analogous to someone saying "I want to learn
science, but I don't know where to start" and answering, "start with
physics then, because everything else comes from that."

C is still a widely used programming in itself, and I still find it
necessary at times when doing something like app development in certain
IDEs (if you need to dig down beyond what the frameworks offer you).

The K&R book covers ANSI C.

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On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Alarm Bells <lists@ruby-forum.com> > wrote:

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