On 2/28/06, Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb / gmail.com> wrote:
> This isn't a troll, I promise.  I'm actually going to be doing this tomorrow.
>
> My normal Ruby spiel is geared more toward the differences between
> dynamic and static langugages, and the power of blocks. In other
> words, "Hey, look at what you can't do in Java."
>
> This is a whole different scenario, because these people are coming on
> board to be web application developers, and their previous programming
> experience is 100% mainframe-based.  They aren't going to know HTML,
> XML, Java, C++, etc.
>
> What are some key points I should make sure to cover for procedural programmers?
> Things on my list so far:
> 1. Variables don't hold values, they are just labels.
> 2. Objects are nouns, methods are verbs.
> 3. Structure keeps you sane.
> 4. Duck typing makes testing easier.
> 5. Rake as an example of something procedural in an object-oriented language.
>
> That being said, I've been immersed in OOP for so long, I don't
> remember what the hurdles are.
> Thoughts? This is going to be a three hour session, wherein I need to
> cover Ruby and at least the bare beginnings of Rails.  Obviously an
> in-depth treatment of either of those things is impossible in that
> timeframe, but I do want people to leave feeling like it's not a
> magical tongue spoken by elves and wild spirits.

Forgetting OOP for a moment, and thinking WWW instead...
It's stateless.
Learn how to manage hidden values.

Those were the two toughest items for me when I moved to the web.

> Thanks,
> --Wilson.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)
The best answer to most questions is "it depends".