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
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… 
On 5/4/07, Ivor P. [email protected] wrote:
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 P.'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)
On 5/4/07, Richard C. [email protected] wrote:
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!
We wrote a little game together, a guessing game where the computer
thinks
of a number between 1 and 100 and you have to guess higher or lower
until
you get it right. Very simple but effective =)
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.
On 5/4/07, Lloyd L. [email protected] wrote:
blasphemes I tried to teach mine Smalltalk. It didn’t work out so hot
because the little program we put together managed to crash the Squeak
runtime.
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:
- 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). - 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? - Is there any interest in the community in seeing this evolve into a
real project?
Thanks for your help,
Sam
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
lol
yeah, i want my gf to learn to code becuase I want her to see how
“simple”
it is - to demistify it. I dont really expect that she will take to it
and
become a programmer, but I think it will give me coding instead of
watching
a chick-flick somewhat more credable
On 5/3/07, Cliff R. [email protected] wrote:
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
I tried to teach a girl C once.
Never did find out what happened to her.
On 5/4/07, Ivor P. [email protected] wrote:
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…
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? 
Ivor
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
On 5/4/07, Francis C. [email protected] wrote:
On 5/4/07, Gregory B. [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.
“but I don’t know that it’s for you to reap ‘benefits’.”
You’re kidding, right? Note the satirical smiley…
Ivor
On 5/4/07, Gregory B. [email protected] wrote:
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…
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.
I deal primarily with very large companies in my work, and I find that
while
the lower IT ranks (programmers, sysadmins and other techs) are still
overwhelmingly male, women are nearly at a level with men in the
higher-value-added (and better-paid) echelons. That would include CIOs,
senior business analysts, program managers, and account representatives.
In
other words, we guys are interacting mostly with machines (and seem
entirely
content to), while the women are interacting with PEOPLE, and making
decisions with real financial and business impact.
How’s this for a gender imbalance: look at the male-vs-female ranks in
the
medical schools today. In twenty years when today’s med students are at
the
top of their careers, we’ll be asking how the medical profession came to
be
so female-dominated and what (if anything) to do about it. In the law
schools, men and women are now about even. (Since the MBA has come to be
such a throwaway degree, I’m now convinced that the JD is a more
attractive
degree for people who aspire to senior management.)
Hi –
On Sat, 5 May 2007, Gregory B. wrote:
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.
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
My apologies.
The notion of my comment “Have you guys reaped any benefits? :p” 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”.
I recognise that the comment should have stayed within my close group of
friends where the potential damage could be contained and handled.
Regards
Ivor
Haha… They should make a southpark episode about this… Seriously, put
the
guns away guys. Ivor, I took your comment as it was intended. To those
hurling rebukes, get off your high horses and consider the context of
this
conversation for just a moment. It is a sad fact that this is a
predominately male industry, but seriously, you can’t pin that on some
geeks
wanting to show their geeky girlfriends their geeky ways.