On Jun 29, 2006, at 9:01 AM, Leslie Viljoen wrote:

> On 6/29/06, Ruby Quiz <james / grayproductions.net> wrote:
>> My wife, Dana, is the one working through Learning to Program and  
>> the reason I
>> added the note to the quiz.  Those watching the solutions will  
>> know that she did
>> submit, but she also told me in a private message:
>
> All that Ruby is pretty interesting, but far more interesting is that
> you got your wife programming!

<laughs>  I think so too.

> Unless she's already a programmer?

Nope.  She's an above average Excel and Access user, but that's as  
close as she gets.

> How did you do that?

Well, if she can talk about my quizzes being tough, does that mean I  
can complain about her being a tough student?  ;)  I'm kidding.   
She's mostly quit yelling at me about how dumb of a sport this is.

I've tried teaching her a little before, during my Perl years, with  
that language.  It didn't take then, which is totally my fault for  
teaching it poorly.  We're giving it another shot now with Ruby as  
the language, Learn to Program as the primary teacher, and me as the  
guy to yell at when you're stuck.  That seems to be the right mix.

Dana is someone who could really benefit from a little bit of  
programming knowledge.  Her job involves lots of reporting, with the  
information often coming from oddly formatted text files.  (See the  
"To Excel" Ruby Quiz, for an example.)  She does quite a bit of data  
munging, but thus far has had to use some tough tools to accomplish  
that.

My goal is to give her a better tool to use on the job.  I have no  
intention of making her an expert Ruby programmer.  I just want to  
give her enough pieces of the puzzle that she can code  
straightforward data query and filter scripts.

She's doing well so far.  She's currently in that horrible period we  
all go through where she's learning to get along with a compiler  
that, to her, seems to have a one-word vocabulary:   Error.  I'm sure  
she doesn't believe me when I tell her it is just a phase and it will  
pass, but I can already see it easing up on her.  She's threatening  
to divorce me a lot less now.

Ironically, she has no trouble with, and actually seems to enjoy,  
regular expressions (a James lesson, not Learn to Program).  I know  
several programmers that can't say that.

I couldn't be more proud.  ;)

James Edward Gray II