Ruby for Highschoolers?

ruby-talk
1

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used. However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that she should try it for one of the programming courses next year. (Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue environment available for Ruby (screencap: http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all* Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

2

Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@OwlManAtt.com> writes:

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby
instead of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but
whatever.

I know this sounds heretic and probably is not what you expect from
this list, *but why*?

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course
were writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables,
and using cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning
of the year with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed
herself for that, because this was her first year teaching
programming, and she had never been trained on Scheme.

Do you think an untrained teacher better teaches Ruby instead of Scheme?

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one.

That's a matter of taste; people that never saw code didn't yet
develop a taste for it.

It would also open the course up to more concepts than Scheme
offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, object
orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably also
benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

I'd say, due to the small core of Scheme, it's even easier to explain
these topics. You have everything: write a few macros for
unit-testing, files can be done with ports (they are in the spec),
object orientation can be done with closures. Once they did all this,
they know what they are talking about.

Of course, teaching this is not that easy. Did you ever read SICP?
Have a look into it and rethink your choice.

(Despite all of this, I prefer Ruby for *coding*, of course. But
Scheme is the better choice for teaching. YMMV.)

···

Regards,
Nick Evans

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

3

I think non-technical High Schoolers would definitely benefit from learning Ruby before moving on to other statically-typed languages. I am a junior next year and we only have one Computer Science course that teaches Java. I have a couple friends who took it this year and some of the code they have written this year could have benefited from prior knowledge of any basic programming. I taught myself Ruby using the Pickaxe book among others and I would have to say it is just absolutely fun to program in Ruby.

The IDE could be a problem, but if anything, it could probably be coded in Ruby using one of the toolkits in a couple days/weeks (using Fox, Tk, etc.).

-Steven Davidovitz

···

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:55:39 +0900 Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@OwlManAtt.com> wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
environment available for Ruby (screencap:
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

4

Nicholas Evans wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

Boy, do I envy you guys. When I was in high school, I learned
BASIC and Fortran.

This is not a bad idea IMO. Start with simple things, of course.
Introduce OO fairly early.

Are these people who have programmed before at all? Or not?

Look up whatever Ruby tutorials you can. I don't have links
handy, but there are some good ones out there.

Good luck...

Hal

5

Hi Nick,

I recently landed a job teaching math and IT at a school here. I have just
finished my first 6 months, where we have mostly been focusing on HTML and
relational databases.

However, there's still programming and OO left in the curriculum (as well as
ERP and other things).

I initially had the idea that I would teach PHP, because it ties in nicely
with what my students know about html and the web, and I could do the OO
part with PHP, too.

But I think that Ruby would be better as a teaching language.

I'd be very interested in seeing what you come up with, if you decide to
teach Ruby. Maybe we can bounce some ideas off of eachother.

Regards,

Kenneth.

···

2006/6/11, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com>:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
environment available for Ruby (screencap:
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

--
Med venlig hilsen / Best regards

Kenneth Johnsen

6

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used. However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that she should try it for one of the programming courses next year. (Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

Maybe you could base the curiculum/text on Chris Pine's Learn to Program. (Either that or Cartoon Foxes).

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue environment available for Ruby (screencap: http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

Hmm, Ruby or Scheme for non-technical students? That's tough, Scheme's sysntax makes your eyes bleed, but it has very very simple semantics(short of callcc). OTOH the subset of Ruby I'd imagine you'd be using for this class would have pretty simple semantics to.

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all* Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type thinggy.

I don't know of any DrScheme-ish environment for ruby. You could try using FreeRIDE or Scite (both come with the one-click installer). Or possibly FXIrb [1]

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

Good luck

[1] http://rubyforge.org/projects/fxirb/

···

On Jun 11, 2006, at 12:55 PM, Nicholas Evans wrote:

7

Howdy list,

Howdy Nicholas.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

When it comes to teaching programming, I'm not certain Ruby is a good fit. There are definitely some points in its favour, which have been pretty much covered it seems to me, so I'll point out a couple of reasons I think it's not an appropriate fit. For a bit of context, I'm a PhD student at the moment, and have been a tutor/TA on introductory programming courses for a couple of years now (they were in Java).

The reason for this is that there are many, many different ways to accomplish things in Ruby, and this can actually be detrimental to the students' fully understanding the basic concepts involved. They tend to get hung up in trying to sort out the minor differences between, say, all the different ways of doing a conditional. When this happens, I've noticed students tend to drift towards "string substitution" - basically just fiddling with the order of what they've written, hoping to hit the right combination by chance; they get the assignment done, but they've learned essentially nothing.

Basically, there are many ways to accomplish a given task, which makes it comparatively easy to write a program that - while it produces the desired output - completely misses the point of the learning exercise.

Another difficulty is that while the syntax might *look* straight-forward, but in part that's because a lot of Ruby relies on programmers having an understanding of how programming works in general, and a lot of the generic terms can be elided or condensed. When you're learning programming, you need to know about those implicit bits, and having to write them out explicitly helps with that.

To give a concrete example, think of the 'return' statement - it's *required* in Java for the method to return anything, and is optional (but generally not used) in Ruby. For someone learning Ruby, this means they have to remember that the last statement evaluated is the return value, which is just one more thing to put on their stack of not-quite-understood concepts (and they have LOTS of those concepts when they're learning).

matthew smillie.

···

On Jun 11, 2006, at 17:55, Nicholas Evans wrote:

8

You're asking for views on teaching a particular programming language to
high-schoolers. This may sound like the dumbest imaginable question, but
have you decided exactly why your students need to be studying a programming
language?

Are you trying to impart some early training to young people who are
thinking about pursuing careers as professional programmers? Are you
thinking of it as an adjunct to a math or science courses? Are you thinking
about orienting future businesspeople who will spend a lifetime programming
Word and Excel macros (aarrgh, where's my razor... I can't face that
future)? Are you thinking about people destined for technical careers for
whom some mild familiarity with scripting can be useful? Or have you smply
taken a personal interest in imparting some of your own joy of programming?

If you know your goals and your audience's goals, then the choice of
language(s) may be self-evident.

···

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
environment available for Ruby (screencap:
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

9

Ruby and Scheme are both beautiful languages.

I think Ruby would be an excellent choice for a first programming
language. You don't need to know a lot of concepts to get started
programming in it, but it's also a very rich language. I'm tempted to
say that Ruby will grow with you, meaning not that Ruby will gather
more and more syntax with age, but that as you become a better
programmer, you'll discover other areas or ideas in that language that
you have yet to explore.

However, as you know Ruby but not Scheme, I'd recommend that you
advantage of the opportunity to learn Scheme. You'll probably find
that it will make you a better programmer in Ruby, as well.

Jeff

···

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
environment available for Ruby (screencap:
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

10

Nicholas Evans wrote:

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

Hi Nicholas,

For what it's worth, I took an introductory CS course taught by one of the authors of How to Design Programs as a freshman, and we used that book as the class text. I found both the curriculum and the instructor to be immensely annoying, and I won't go into it, but suffice it to say that I think there's a lot to recommend other approaches, including the reasons you gave.

That having been said, developing a curriculum for any subject is difficult. Computer science is a harder subject than most, and a lot of very smart people have used up a great deal of ink trying. Moreover, Scheme is a powerful language that's well worth knowing, even if it takes several years before you realize what you've learned. If you do start to develop your own set of lesson plans, please post them online as you write them. I'm sure you can find people, myself among them, who would be happy to read them and make (completely uninformed) suggestions.

> So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
> think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
> highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
> environment available for Ruby (screencap:
> http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?
>
> The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
> Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
> of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
> the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
> thinggy.

I think you're right about DrScheme, and unfortunately, I can't think of any Ruby-based IDEs with similar features. I can't imagine that it would be hard to replicate the salient features of DrScheme, minus the debugging, pretty easily in Eclipse, although I don't know that anyone's tried yet.

For those wondering how an IDE could possibly be useful for a beginning programming course, you should absolutely download DrScheme and check it out. You might be surprised.

I guess at the end of the day I do think that Ruby is a pretty good fit for beginners, even non-technical sophomores. I *can* say that HtDP left a pretty sour taste in my mouth for a long time. But Ruby is relatively internally consistent, it's elegant, it's friendly, and it's immediately useful.

Brian Guthrie

11

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

Glad to hear you have that priviledge, as a student :slight_smile:

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.

Scheme? Wow, that must really beat the students to death.

However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

This is why I love Ruby. Ruby is very adventurous, and with every
adventure you have a good time, and it's not so difficult to
understand.

Ruby is easy to explore, and really doesn't get in your way. If you
want to teach the students some of the basics first, perhaps you
should consider the QuickRef, which is an excellent reference
(Ruby | zenspider.com | by ryan davis).

The Pickaxe also covers a lot of the language in an orderly fashion
(http://www.rubycentral.com/book\).

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year.

If you can teach Java or C++ in half a school year (as my high school
did), then you can most certainly teach Ruby in half a school year.

The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans.

I don't believe that programming is about solving only one person's
problems. Only focusing on a specific set of functionality for a
semester seems to only restrict the students from doing what they want
to do.

I'd suggest walking them through the basics, handing them lessons, but
also every now and then telling them to write programs which solve
problems they have.

Maybe one student's problem may be that he wants to calculate his
monthly allowance based on his grades. Say this student wants to see
how much allowance his parents will give him if he aces his US History
exam. Maybe another student wants to write a small game. This can be
sort of a project the students will get every 2 weeks.

I feel that programming is more about having fun.

Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

If the students don't learn anything, it's natural for the teacher to
feel ashamed and feel that she is to be blamed.

I think this is where Ruby fits in well, because Ruby has a more
readable syntax than Scheme (obviously) and it has a better flow of
logic as far as the student's concerned.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

Teaching Ruby is good, but I suggest you stay away from
metaprogramming. Students may get as confused by Ruby's
metaprogramming than they did with basic Scheme.

All in all, I think it's a good idea to teach high school students Ruby.

I have to warn you though, I'm obviously biased :slight_smile:

···

On 6/12/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:

--
Matt

12

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used. However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that she should try it for one of the programming courses next year. (Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for that, because
this was her first year teaching programming, and she had never been trained on Scheme.

If you can teach someone to program, learning a new language isn't going to be a big problem. Your decision should be less about the language and more about the concepts you need to be teaching. Scheme is an excellent language for teaching people how to program. Sure, most of them are unlikely to use scheme much if ever in day to day operations on the job (if they choose to go down this path and stick with it), but it's an excellent language to teach programming concepts.

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in highschool Ruby over Scheme?

No, I don't. Keep the language simple, teach them how to program; those who continue on with programming will find languages that they wish to pursue, and will learn those when the time is appropriate.

···

On 11-Jun-06, at 12:55 PM, Nicholas Evans wrote:

Nick Evans

--
Jeremy Tregunna
jtregunna@blurgle.ca

"One serious obstacle to the adoption of good programming languages is the notion that everything has to be sacrificed for speed. In computer languages as in life, speed kills." -- Mike Vanier

13

Brian Schroeder put together quite a nice course:
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/course/

I found a few errors but mostly I thought it was very good.
FXRI comes with the Ruby one-click installer and may be able to
replace DrScheme.

As to whether to teach Ruby - of course! The advantage with Ruby is
that it's FUN, and I think that's the biggest factor when learning
anything.

Les

···

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

14

Christian Neukirchen wrote:

Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@OwlManAtt.com> writes:

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby
instead of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but
whatever.

I know this sounds heretic and probably is not what you expect from
this list, *but why*?

I figured I'd be killing a few birds with one stone. I think Ruby is simple enough to teach basic programming concepts with (although my opinion on the matter probably isn't worth much, because I don't know Scheme, really). It's also practical and a hellava lot closer to Java than Scheme is. And we are kids are compelled to take the Java course senior year if we take the Scheme one sophomore year.

I also like Ruby better than Scheme.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course
were writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables,
and using cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning
of the year with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed
herself for that, because this was her first year teaching
programming, and she had never been trained on Scheme.

Do you think an untrained teacher better teaches Ruby instead of Scheme?

I think I've underexplained the situation. If I end up as the teacher's assistant and I can sell Ruby, I'm going to be the one teaching it to the class AND the teacher.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one.

That's a matter of taste; people that never saw code didn't yet
develop a taste for it.

That said, I saw people getting incredibly confused by the idea of matching the curly braces up. Ruby looks a lot more natural, so I think it would be easier for people to relate something like this:

def do_something(n)
   if n < 10
     true
   else
     false
   end
end

As opposed to:

(define (do_something n)
  (cond
   [(< n 10) true]
   [else false]
  )
)

(Sorry for parse errors, if there are any.)

It would also open the course up to more concepts than Scheme
offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files, object
orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably also
benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

I'd say, due to the small core of Scheme, it's even easier to explain
these topics. You have everything: write a few macros for
unit-testing, files can be done with ports (they are in the spec),
object orientation can be done with closures. Once they did all this,
they know what they are talking about.

I was unaware that Scheme had OO. I don't really *know* Scheme, so I guess I'm not being terribly fair.

Of course, teaching this is not that easy. Did you ever read SICP?
Have a look into it and rethink your choice.

I haven't even heard of that. I'll look into it. =)

(Despite all of this, I prefer Ruby for *coding*, of course. But
Scheme is the better choice for teaching. YMMV.)

Thank you for the feedback!

15

Steven Davidovitz wrote:

I think non-technical High Schoolers would definitely benefit from learning Ruby before moving on to other statically-typed languages. I am a junior next year and we only have one Computer Science course that teaches Java. I have a couple friends who took it this year and some of the code they have written this year could have benefited from prior knowledge of any basic programming. I taught myself Ruby using the Pickaxe book among others and I would have to say it is just absolutely fun to program in Ruby.

The IDE could be a problem, but if anything, it could probably be coded in Ruby using one of the toolkits in a couple days/weeks (using Fox, Tk, etc.).
  
I know this will be controversial, but...IDE? Why do you need an IDE? They're learning programming, not clicking on things. They can write their Ruby programs using whatever text editor is convenient, vim, emacs, Scite, whatever.

"IDE? We don't need no stinkin' IDE!"

16

Hal Fulton wrote:

Nicholas Evans wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

Boy, do I envy you guys. When I was in high school, I learned
BASIC and Fortran.

This is not a bad idea IMO. Start with simple things, of course.
Introduce OO fairly early.

I'd find it difficult to not talk about it from the very start.

Are these people who have programmed before at all? Or not?

For the most part, no. The assumption that the course makes is that the students are complete beginners.

Look up whatever Ruby tutorials you can. I don't have links
handy, but there are some good ones out there.

Aye. Another benefit is having the first edition of the pickaxe available online. We used How To Design Programs a lot during the class.

Good luck...

Thank you!

17

Matthew Smillie wrote:

Basically, there are many ways to accomplish a given task, which makes it comparatively easy to write a program that - while it produces the desired output - completely misses the point of the learning exercise.

If accomplishing a given task is *not* the point of the learning exercise, then what is, and why might students be unclear on what is expected of them?

I'm skeptical that Tim Toady is the culprit here. If you, as the teacher, don't want students diddling arounf with every syntax for a conditional, then tell them the one form they are allowed to use for the exercise and leave it at that.

Another difficulty is that while the syntax might *look* straight- forward, but in part that's because a lot of Ruby relies on programmers having an understanding of how programming works in general, and a lot of the generic terms can be elided or condensed. When you're learning programming, you need to know about those implicit bits, and having to write them out explicitly helps with that.

To give a concrete example, think of the 'return' statement - it's *required* in Java for the method to return anything, and is optional (but generally not used) in Ruby. For someone learning Ruby, this means they have to remember that the last statement evaluated is the return value, which is just one more thing to put on their stack of not-quite-understood concepts (and they have LOTS of those concepts when they're learning).

Actually, this is fundamental to understanding Ruby; expressions return values; methods are a series of expressions.

The "must remember to type a gratuitous 'return'" seems like the extra work.

Students will learn the Ruby you teach them. Don't throw a lot of syntax at them before explaining basic principles. Otherwise the syntax just seems arbitrary (or more arbitrary than it is), and the principles will not make much sense after they've been blindly coding with random expressions in search of code that simply runs without errors.

It may be useful to watch the SICP videos from MIT (and they may be the best argument for teaching Scheme over Ruby :slight_smile: )

http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

···

--
James Britt

"Take eloquence and wring its neck."
  - Paul Verlaine

18

Steven Davidovitz wrote:

I think non-technical High Schoolers would definitely benefit from
learning Ruby before moving on to other statically-typed languages.

I disagree.
I think that learning a stricter/statically-typed languages first would
benefit people better.

It's far easier to go from strict(statically) to free(dynamic).

I come with 20 years of C/C++ experience.

It took me no time to understand that variables don't have types,
classes can be changed midway through the script, Arrays can hold
anything.

If you start with this knowledge and try to go to C++, you will commit
suicide.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

19

Hi,

I do not think that teaching ruby is a good idea because they will get used
to built-in function and built-in function without even be able to
understand how something is built ( design patterns and etc ), IMHO learning
what is programming better than what is programming language

···

On 6/11/06, Jeff Dik <s450r1@gmail.com> wrote:

Ruby and Scheme are both beautiful languages.

I think Ruby would be an excellent choice for a first programming
language. You don't need to know a lot of concepts to get started
programming in it, but it's also a very rich language. I'm tempted to
say that Ruby will grow with you, meaning not that Ruby will gather
more and more syntax with age, but that as you become a better
programmer, you'll discover other areas or ideas in that language that
you have yet to explore.

However, as you know Ruby but not Scheme, I'd recommend that you
advantage of the opportunity to learn Scheme. You'll probably find
that it will make you a better programmer in Ruby, as well.

Jeff

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:
> Howdy list,
>
> I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
> student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.
>
> This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
> However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
> she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
> (Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
> her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)
>
> If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
> of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.
>
> The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
> school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
> writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
> cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
> with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
> that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
> never been trained on Scheme.
>
> I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
> looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
> concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
> object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
> also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...
>
> So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
> think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
> highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
> environment available for Ruby (screencap:
> http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif
)?
>
> The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
> Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
> of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
> the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
> thinggy.
>
> I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.
>
> Regards,
> Nick Evans
>

20

Francis Cianfrocca wrote:

You're asking for views on teaching a particular programming language to
high-schoolers. This may sound like the dumbest imaginable question, but
have you decided exactly why your students need to be studying a
programming
language?

Are you trying to impart some early training to young people who are
thinking about pursuing careers as professional programmers? Are you
thinking of it as an adjunct to a math or science courses? Are you
thinking
about orienting future businesspeople who will spend a lifetime
programming
Word and Excel macros (aarrgh, where's my razor... I can't face that
future)? Are you thinking about people destined for technical careers for
whom some mild familiarity with scripting can be useful? Or have you
smply
taken a personal interest in imparting some of your own joy of
programming?

If you know your goals and your audience's goals, then the choice of
language(s) may be self-evident.

I believe the goals are stated in the original post. The first half of
the course, Programming I, is to teach programming concepts. The second
half, presumably by someone else, called Programming II, is in Java.

Now, unlike Hal Fulton, when *I* was in high school, high schools didn't
have computers. For that matter, major universities didn't have computer
science programs and minor universities, if they had a computer at all,
it was a punched card thingie used to do accounting. :slight_smile: Of the 300 or so
people in my senior class, perhaps 10, among them of course myself,
ended up learning how to program. I think I'm the only one still doing
it, mostly because I love it too much to retire.

In any event, that was a long time ago. For teaching programming to
today's high school students, I think there are really four choices for
Programming I, given that Programming II is in Java.

1. Stay with Scheme. It's a "known quantity", it's a perfect vehicle for
learning about recursion, lists, selectors, constructors and predicates,
functional programming styles, etc. If they're going to be computer
scientists, this would be my choice.

2. Start with Java. Hey, why not? They'll be learning Java anyhow in
Programming II, and there are world-class free IDEs for it. Why make
them switch languages in mid-stream?

3. Hold on now ... I am serious. How about C? Darn near everything under
the hood in today's computers -- the Ruby interpreters, Java (and
Scheme) virtual machines, the Linux kernel, the GCC compilers -- is
written in C. It's close to the metal.

Actually those are the only choices I would have picked, since I don't
know Ruby very well yet. But hey, this is a Ruby list, so I'll say

4. Ruby. I don't think the IDEs are a problem, it is a good introduction
to programming and unlike Java and C, there's no "compiler" to wait for.
In fact, if Programming II was not in Java, Ruby would have been number
2 and there would have only been three items in the list. :slight_smile:

···

On 6/11/06, Nicholas Evans <OwlManAtt@owlmanatt.com> wrote:

Howdy list,

I'm a highschool student with a very high chance of ending up
student-teaching the Programming I course during the 07-08 schoolyear.

This year was the first year for the course, and Scheme was used.
However, I've been talking to the teacher about Ruby, suggesting that
she should try it for one of the programming courses next year.
(Unfortunately, there's no ready-made curriculum for Ruby available to
her, and she is not really a techie, so that idea was shot down.)

If I end up teaching it, I think it would be cool to cover Ruby instead
of Scheme. I'd have to develop my own curriculum, but whatever.

The goal of the course is to teach programming concepts in half of a
school year. The things that were covered during this year's course were
writing functions to do a simple calculation, using variables, and using
cond/booleans. Many students struggled during the beginning of the year
with writing basic functions. Our teacher kind of blamed herself for
that, because this was her first year teaching programming, and she had
never been trained on Scheme.

I think that teaching students Ruby might be a bit less...arcane. It
looks friendlier, for one. It would also open the course up to more
concepts than Scheme offers, like automagic testing, manipulating files,
object orientation, etc. Teaching OO during this course would probably
also benefit the kids later on for Java during Programming II...

So, given all of that, I have two questions for ya, list. One, do you
think there's any merit from teaching pretty non-technical sophomores in
highschool Ruby over Scheme? And two - Is there a DrScheme-eqsue
environment available for Ruby (screencap:
http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/tour/images/editor-repl.gif\)?

The DrScheme-esque thing is a big deal. The computer labs are *all*
Windows labs, and nothing will change this. The program serves as a sort
of incredibly simple IDE. In the top pane, you can put in your code, and
the bottom pane displays results and lets you use an irb-for-scheme type
thinggy.

I appreciate any comments you can give me, list.

Regards,
Nick Evans

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com