I'm going to sidestep ranting about ranting about ranting about Ruby. The linked article seems very common-sense to me. But then, I never was much of one for ego-contests. I did however find something worth discussing in the blog post. Let me quote: For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe…
"These sorts of experiences give me hope for the future of this profession. I firmly believe that the culture of good ol' boys' clubs and bondage-and-discipline programming languages are fettering access to the minds and talents of too many promising individuals. It's a crying shame." Oh, geez. Melodramatic, much? I know it's antithetical around these parts, but I like C++. If you want to talk about beauty, there's b…
What I am saying is that in the rush to create the best engineering solutions, we have forgotten how to make programming approachable to the newcomer. Even people with aptitude and inclination get discouraged, if not by the technical stumbling blocks of the language they are using, by the unfriendly culture which has surrounded the craft.
Even children can write simple English. They aren't discouraged from reading and writing because they aren't great novelists. Good teachers try to teach the fundamentals and instill both the technical capability of writing and the joy of reading. Current CS pedagogy fails utterly in this regard. Early students spend so much thought on extraneous things like public static void main and pleasing a compiler that little attention is left to see the beauty in the theory and practice of computation.
The lack of a decent REPL or any useful interactive introspective techniques make C++ and Java particularly awful for teaching introductory computing concepts. Ruby is much more friendly on that level, as are many other languages. Look at projects like _why's Shoes or some of the things being done with Squeak. Look at the volumes of hackers who cut their teeth on things like BASIC. Look at how many industrial-strength best practices we can bypass while still teaching the fundamental joy of programming.
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, designer of many key gameplay concepts we now take for granted, was once asked in an interview what the fundamental concept behind his games is. He replied that the fundamental nature of a video game is that you press a button and something happens on the screen. It sounds simple but cuts through to the heart of the matter. Similarly I think that the fundamental appeal of computer programming is that I type something in and the computer carries out my wishes.
The love of programming is something that seems to come to people only by happenstance these days. If a language like Ruby can help more people to discover that love then more power to it.