[NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 03:03:49PM -0700, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 06:05:20PM +0000, grant at amadensor.com wrote:
> > Ruby - The language is brilliant.   It does everything just as you would 
> > want and expect.   However, it is a pig at runtime, and the runtime tends 
> 
> Being a pig at runtime is, IMHO, not an issue for teaching programming.  I
> would give up quite a lot in the performance area to just have something
> that's clean and obvious and doesn't get in the way of the programmers
> learning to program.

Good point.


> 
> > Gambas - GUI is easy, you can easily connect code to GUI artifacts.   
> > However, it is not cross platform, and does not really seem to have enough 
> > people using it to really reach critical mass.
> 
> I really don't know anything about gambas, but one thing I imagine is that
> the users will want to be able to easily create little GUIs.  If gambas has
> a nice system for doing this, I'd seriously consider it.

Actually, that reminds me -- there's a very simple, very easy, "fun" GUI
toolkit for Ruby called "shoes" that you might want to look into for new
programmers that will want easy GUI stuff.  It doesn't get much faster
and easier than shoes.


> 
> If it were me, I'd consider using the OLPC XO environment for it.  As I
> understand it, they have a "view source" button so that on most
> applications you can push this button, look at and change the source code
> for the screen you're on.  I think this could be a very powerful
> environment for learning.
> 
> I believe this whole environment will run in VMWare on a regular machine.
> 
> I'd at least be looking at it.

That's a good idea.  I wish I'd thought of it.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others
we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of
ours, and this we should do freely and generously."