You do know that Ruby and Java are pretty much the same age, right? :)

I disagree.  Java has a lot of quirks too, many that get in the way of
learning good practices right off.  I think as a first language you
need to find something that fits with your brain and allows you be
successful quickly, be it Java, C#, PHP, or Ruby.  Being able to get
past the "I want to do something meaningful" barrier is the key to
learning a language IMO.

--Jeremy

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 1:06 AM, Patrick Li <patrickli_2001 / hotmail.com> wrote:
> For your first programming language, I wouldn't suggest learning Ruby.
> From my experience, both learning and teaching, Java is a really
> suitable beginner language. It's adequately powerful, and extremely
> simple, and it comes with enough libraries for you to do a lot of work
> in.
>
> Ruby is still new. And even though the language is quite elegant and
> extremely powerful, there's lots of quirks that can be abused.
> Experienced programmers naturally know what features of the language to
> use sparingly and carefully. Beginners will have more difficulty.
>
> To sum up: I haven't encountered much that I can do with Ruby that I
> wouldn't be able to do in Java. Ruby helps speed things up
> tremendously... but that's given that you already know what you're
> doing.
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>



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