Wake up! It’s 2021: Javascript and Python rule the programming world. And that makes this the PERFECT time to introduce young coders, and students in particular, to Ruby. Hear me out.
“Why now?!?” Ruby was always a fun language to learn. But now it’s an important language to learn. Students are different today – today’s students are at the right place to appreciate how well-crafted their code could be if given the right tools, techniques, and care.
“So what does Ruby bring to the teacher’s table?!?” Ruby introduces students to the purest form of object-orientation their generation has seen. But it is also a gentle introduction to functional paradigms and concurrency metaphors. But most important, Ruby should be their first look at a community that cares.
“I’m sold, let’s teach them Rails!!!” Hold up a sec. Now is also the time to step back and get deeper into basics. Let me share with you how we use Roda and other best-of-breed libraries to showcase for students what software ecosystems can look like. Today’s students should become into programmers who create frameworks.
“But I’m not a student anymore…” This talk is really not about students and teachers. It’s about how we learn and how we mentor. And it’s a call to expand what tools we use and how we champion this language in a crowded field of programming upstarts.
About Soumya Ray
Soumya Ray is a professor at the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He writes code, publishes research, and teaches software development and computational stats. But lately, he really can’t tell the difference between these things.