If you’re at all interested in learning to program, either to make your Web forms do things beyond what PHP Feedback Form can make them do, or to explore the magic that happens inside these shiny silver boxes given us by our dear departed Steve, then look no further than this magical book:
I bought it for my daughters, when I tired of explaining what it is I do a lot of the hours of the day (and also, vainly, in the hope that one of them would develop an interest in it as I have). I started reading it myself, and found it to be amusing, amazing, and re-learned a few things I had wrong all along.
Of course Chris Pine had me hooked when I discovered that one of the exercises was to write a program which would write out the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall – funny because I had written just that program about a year ago to show my middle girl how loops work.
But best of all, all the examples are written in Ruby, which means you aren’t having to put up with the vagaries of PHP or another cobbled-together language of many colors, and you learn object orientation along the way (because in Ruby, EVERYTHING is an object, even the number 42). Short of learning Smalltalk as your first programming language, it’s fairly impossible to be this spoiled and still learn something.
Thank you for the recommendation - I think ill put it on my santa list…
J
On Dec 23, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
If you’re at all interested in learning to program, either to make your Web forms do things beyond what PHP Feedback Form can make them do, or to explore the magic that happens inside these shiny silver boxes given us by our dear departed Steve, then look no further than this magical book:
I bought it for my daughters, when I tired of explaining what it is I do a lot of the hours of the day (and also, vainly, in the hope that one of them would develop an interest in it as I have). I started reading it myself, and found it to be amusing, amazing, and re-learned a few things I had wrong all along.
Of course Chris Pine had me hooked when I discovered that one of the exercises was to write a program which would write out the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall – funny because I had written just that program about a year ago to show my middle girl how loops work.
But best of all, all the examples are written in Ruby, which means you aren’t having to put up with the vagaries of PHP or another cobbled-together language of many colors, and you learn object orientation along the way (because in Ruby, EVERYTHING is an object, even the number 42). Short of learning Smalltalk as your first programming language, it’s fairly impossible to be this spoiled and still learn something.
I retract that - already got that on a rec. from you.
J
On Dec 23, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
If you’re at all interested in learning to program, either to make your Web forms do things beyond what PHP Feedback Form can make them do, or to explore the magic that happens inside these shiny silver boxes given us by our dear departed Steve, then look no further than this magical book:
I bought it for my daughters, when I tired of explaining what it is I do a lot of the hours of the day (and also, vainly, in the hope that one of them would develop an interest in it as I have). I started reading it myself, and found it to be amusing, amazing, and re-learned a few things I had wrong all along.
Of course Chris Pine had me hooked when I discovered that one of the exercises was to write a program which would write out the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall – funny because I had written just that program about a year ago to show my middle girl how loops work.
But best of all, all the examples are written in Ruby, which means you aren’t having to put up with the vagaries of PHP or another cobbled-together language of many colors, and you learn object orientation along the way (because in Ruby, EVERYTHING is an object, even the number 42). Short of learning Smalltalk as your first programming language, it’s fairly impossible to be this spoiled and still learn something.
What city are you in (and what country, too)? Philadelphia has three Ruby or Rails based groups (they’re not synonymous) but then we’re lucky. If you go on http://meetup.com you may find something near you, but it depends on your neighborhood.
Walter
On Dec 26, 2011, at 8:30 AM, Bryan Irvine wrote:
Walt,
Would you be able to recommend a Ruby user group that would be suitable for a novice programmer that will be reading Chris’ book?
According to http://www.rubyusergroups.org/, there are two in your fair city: Toronto Ruby User Group and Toronto Ruby Brigade. You may also find something in Meetup, so you’ve got a wealth of options there.
Walter
On Dec 26, 2011, at 11:13 AM, Bryan Irvine wrote:
I’m in Toronto. Will see what meetup has available. Thanks!