Ruby love

[Cliff Rowley]

I just taught my girlfriend - who has never coded before - how to code in
Ruby. Is that a testament to how easy Ruby is or what? I've only been
using it a few weeks myself.

I had to share this. That was all ;-)

Cliff

 

[Richard Conroy]

this is awesome - i have the same desire what did you have her code -
perhaps we can start a thread on what you can get your gf to code...

Mine has been working through Chris Pine's learn to program. She enjoys
it, says it is like a puzzle. (wean her off sudoku at least).

THough I think command line programs aren't actually challenging her
enough, but they are time consuming.

You should have seen her face when I fired up IRB and showed her how
to find out what methods a particular instance supports. I just had to
broaden her horizons a bit, so that she doesn't consider CLI to be all
there is to making apps.

It would be a waste with Ruby, where simple short scripts can have
enormous power (Camping, I am looking at you)

 

[Chris Carter]

Mine has been working through Chris Pine's learn to program. She enjoys
it, says it is like a puzzle. (wean her off sudoku at least).

THough I think command line programs aren't actually challenging her
enough, but they are time consuming.

You should have seen her face when I fired up IRB and showed her how
to find out what methods a particular instance supports. I just had to
broaden her horizons a bit, so that she doesn't consider CLI to be all
there is to making apps.

It would be a waste with Ruby, where simple short scripts can have
enormous power (Camping, I am looking at you)

If you try to throw her some Camping, make sure she pretty decently
understands Ruby first. Camping breaks some "rules" and it does some
things really weird, which she might try to use/implement in other
apps, when it probably isn't a good idea. But do teach her Camping!

I am going to start teaching a friend with no programming experiance
Ruby using _why's TryRuby (and HH when an os x port gets out). If you
are on Windows though, get your gf's Hackety Hack, it's great!

 

[Lloyd Linklater]

I also started teaching an old flame how to program. She went through
the "rolling with Ruby on Rails" tutorial and is as delighted as a kid
in a candy store. If she tried .NET programming instead, I expect that
I would be ducking computer parts as she hurled the bits of what
remained of her computer at me.

 

[Sammy Larbi]

Disclosure: As part of a school project, I've been writing about
partial order planning and implemented a simple partial order planner in
Ruby. However, that project was due today and has been submitted
already, so feel free to offer pointers if you can, as I am interested
in improving it.

Also, I wasn't sure how to do this post, since I'm not in the habit of
posting unsolicited links to my blog on mailing lists. However, the
entire thing was really long (I felt too long for email), so I posted it
to my blog so as to not write a book on the list =). Therefore, I
decided to go with the [ANN] header to warn people, but also I wanted
others to know I was asking for help as well. I'm not sure about the
social norms regarding something like this, so please forgive me if I've
broken them.

Anyway, the post is at
http://www.codeodor.com/index.cfm/2007/5/4/Constructing-a-POP-Domain-Specific-Language-in-Ruby/1173
and it describes my attempt at creating a partial order planner in Ruby.

Specifically, I wanted to ask 3 questions/favors:

1) I'd love a critique on and comments about how to improve my use of
Ruby. I've been using it for several months, but I'm sure there are
ways I can improve it (my style and usage of the language).
2) For anyone who is interested or has knowledge on the subject, can you
spot any weaknesses or identify areas of improvement in the program as
implemented?
3) Is there any interest in the community in seeing this evolve into a
real project?

Thanks for your help,
Sam

 

[Philip Hallstrom]

Great, thanks guys.

I think I will start by trying the guessing game and maybe make it more
complicated from there on.

So...has this payed of for anyone? Have you guys reaped any benefits?

Well, it wasn't Ruby, it was C, but we've been married just under 10 years
now...

Although come to think of it I'm not sure if she really wanted to learn C
in the first place or was just humoring me

-philip

 

[Gregory Brown]

Great, thanks guys.

I think I will start by trying the guessing game and maybe make it more
complicated from there on.

So...has this payed of for anyone? Have you guys reaped any benefits?

You know, this is a little bit more of a sensitive topic than it might
seem. It is a great to teach people close to you to program, but I
don't know that it's for you to reap 'benefits'.

I wonder if there are good ways that we can get more women involved in
programming. Me teaching one of my ex-girlfriend's Perl was actually
a pretty bad experience because I found myself treating her like a
hacker automatically and it caused a lot of social stress...

Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming? How
can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in
programming?

These questions I think are important for us to think about... If
you've been to any users groups or conferences (and I know this isn't
just a Ruby problem), the gender imbalance is startling...

 

[Philip Hallstrom]

So...has this payed of for anyone? Have you guys reaped any benefits?

You know, this is a little bit more of a sensitive topic than it might
seem. It is a great to teach people close to you to program, but I
don't know that it's for you to reap 'benefits'.

I wonder if there are good ways that we can get more women involved in
programming. Me teaching one of my ex-girlfriend's Perl was actually
a pretty bad experience because I found myself treating her like a
hacker automatically and it caused a lot of social stress...

Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming? How
can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in
programming?

I'm not female, but one thing I learned about my wife while teaching her C
(and anything for that matter) is that our styles are very very different.

I'm breadth first and want to learn a lot about the "why" of things and
get a decent grasp on everything (ie, when learning loops, i want to read
about for, while, do all at once before trying any of them).

My wife is just the opposite. Depth first. Show me the for loop. Show
me some examples. Let me use those examples to build something on my own.
Now show me the while loop.

We're like that with everything... doesn't matter what it is, and
invariable she says "just show me how play a movie" while I'm in the
middle of pointing out how cool is that the DVD player can show you
different views, and angles, and mark spots for easy playback, and...

Luckily, we have a system.. who's gonna teach, and in what style

Not sure if all women are this way (probably not), but mine is.

-philip

 

[Gregory Brown]

On 5/4/07, Gregory Brown <[email protected]> wrote:

This is most definitely a sensitive topic. I'm going to ask you a question
that will seem flip but is actually serious. You say "these questions are
important for us to think about." My question to you is: "why?" In other
words, what exactly is undesirable about the fact that there is a gender
imbalance in software development and computer tech in general? Are you
concerned with getting more bodies into the profession? Don't worry, they're
growing programmers like crazy in India and China. Are you concerned with
getting more women into well-paying jobs? Well, that's another question
entirely.

It is not at all a matter of profession to me. It's a matter of the
simple fact that if you have a room with 197 males and 3 females, that
can be a difficult atmosphere just by composition. So I just want to
express that even though I am the stereotype: white male between
18-45, I am willing to consider the impact that a homogeneous makeup
might be having on our community.

I care about the diversity of our community and the barriers to entry.
I should like to help lower them wherever I can, especially when they
are social problems rather than technical ones.

 

[dblack]

Hi --

You know, this is a little bit more of a sensitive topic than it might
seem. It is a great to teach people close to you to program, but I
don't know that it's for you to reap 'benefits'.

The fact that discussions of women in computing, among men, always
seem to take a locker-room turn sooner rather than later may be part
of the problem. I'm certainly not a prude, but I'm pretty tired of
this particular strain of prurience.

I wonder if there are good ways that we can get more women involved in
programming. Me teaching one of my ex-girlfriend's Perl was actually
a pretty bad experience because I found myself treating her like a
hacker automatically and it caused a lot of social stress...

Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming? How
can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in
programming?

These questions I think are important for us to think about... If
you've been to any users groups or conferences (and I know this isn't
just a Ruby problem), the gender imbalance is startling...

A number of years ago, I had this perhaps quixotic notion that perhaps
Ruby could be the one to break the mold and approach a balance. With
this in mind, I contacted the then president of the Association for
Women in Computing, and asked whether she thought there were steps we
might take, with regard to publicizing conferences and so forth, that
might take us in this direction.

I got a somewhat puzzling answer. I think she may have thought that I
was talking about the Ruby hardware description language; she said
something about Ruby being concerned with a traditionally
male-dominated domain (which is an odd comment to make about a
general-purpose programming language). She also brought up what
seemed to me to be biologically deterministic arguments -- precisely
what I least expected. Anyway, it didn't go anywhere.

It may be time to try again, in one way or another.


David

--
Q. What is THE Ruby book for Rails developers?
A. RUBY FOR RAILS by David A. Black (http://www.manning.com/black)
(See what readers are saying! http://www.rubypal.com/r4rrevs.pdf)
Q. Where can I get Ruby/Rails on-site training, consulting, coaching?
A. Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)

 

[Gregory Brown]

My apologies.

The notion of my comment "Have you guys reaped any benefits? " being
seriously interpreted as a power-hungry "could I maybe unlock some hidden
power here" type phrase had not even occurred to me. I made a comment which
amongst my friends would have been interpreted as a cute retorical foray
into "stereotypical geek role-playing".

Ivor, I didn't really interpret it that way, but closer to what you
intended (i think). I wasn't really just offended, I just thought it
was a good place to point out the risks of interpretations of comments
like that.

So if I made it seem like I was singling you out, I didn't intend to.
I was trying to make a general point and get some serious discussion
from it. Next time I should be less lazy and start a new thread.

 

[Gregory Brown]

It may be time to try again, in one way or another.

To attempt to make this constructive rather than critical... How can we do this?
This question has been tumbling around in my local users groups, among
developers on projects I'm involved with, and in the hallway track at
conferences I've been to.

How can we kill the stigma? I think that's our biggest
responsibility, as it's something that requires our participation. I
only fear that it starts way before the open source community in terms
of social and intellectual development...

 

[Gregory Brown]

no worries
glad we could save that one!
I'm going to start teaching my gf to program this eve so hold your thumbs!

It's potentially a very good way to help address the broader issue by
simple, direct participation. Teaching person to person might be one
way to reduce the tensions that arise in academic or professional
settings.

That's why I think parents who have daughters who seem to enjoy the
computer might want to introduce them to Hackity Hack, or programmers
who have cousins or sisters or a friend who always ask them
interesting questions about computing might be able to give them a
lesson or two.

It won't magically make things better, but it could make a difference, I think.

 

[Gregory Brown]

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory Brown [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 05 May 2007 15:04
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: Ruby love

It's potentially a very good way to help address the broader
issue by simple, direct participation. Teaching person to
person might be one way to reduce the tensions that arise in
academic or professional settings.

Let's not forget that it's fun in all this =D Athena really enjoyed coding
with me, and she got the same buzz from telling the computer what to do as I
did when I started. That's all it takes.

I actually typed something about fun and deleted it. The fun factor
is key, teaching anything as a hobby. (possibly just teaching
anything)

On the contrary, ultimately I think this is the key. Programming is one of
those 'spark' things. It's not a career you generally 'fall into' per se.
Most people see a computer as a black box of tricks with total ignorance of
the myriad of man hours spent behind the scenes making it all happen. It's
a whole world you either see or you don't. Thinking back, I can name a fair
few people I've introduced to programming who are now professional in some
capacity, and they've all been friends.

Yeah, I suppose it really could make a difference. I blogged about
this issue just now on ORA, as I wanted to de-hijack this thread.

http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/05/ruby_and_women.html

I personally think it'd be a good thing if those who are out there
teaching females to program could take notes on it and see if you run
into any differences in styles (similar to what Philip) posted. I
think a lot of stuff will be simply differences between *people*, but
if there are more common trends, it could be helpful to investigate
them.

 

[dblack]

Hi --

To attempt to make this constructive rather than critical... How can we do
this?

I was being constructive, just vague I admit that "one way or
another" isn't a very detailed roadmap. But that's part of the
problem, for me. I'm not sure what the roadmap would look like.

This question has been tumbling around in my local users groups, among
developers on projects I'm involved with, and in the hallway track at
conferences I've been to.

How can we kill the stigma? I think that's our biggest
responsibility, as it's something that requires our participation. I
only fear that it starts way before the open source community in terms
of social and intellectual development...

Also, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or something --
meaning, the idea that technical discourse is of interest only to men
may result in a skewing of the population that then gets compounded
over time.


David

--
Q. What is THE Ruby book for Rails developers?
A. RUBY FOR RAILS by David A. Black (http://www.manning.com/black)
(See what readers are saying! http://www.rubypal.com/r4rrevs.pdf)
Q. Where can I get Ruby/Rails on-site training, consulting, coaching?
A. Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)

 

[Gregory Brown]

Hi --



I was being constructive, just vague I admit that "one way or
another" isn't a very detailed roadmap. But that's part of the
problem, for me. I'm not sure what the roadmap would look like.

Oh, whoops... should this <conversation>.
I thought your post was constructive, we've had this discussion
offline before