Ruby as a First Programming Language!

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, this may sound a little strange to some people, especially the more traditional ones, but that is what I am proposing in this post.

My first experience with a programming language was in 1997, with Pascal, a language created in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth, whose main goal was to encourage the use of structured code, especially for teaching.

Here is a small example of a logical test in Pascal:

    program Testelogico;
       
    var a,b:integer;

    uses crt;

    begin
     clrscr;
     writeln ('Digite um número para A');
     readln (a);
     writeln ('Digite o número para B');
     readln (b);
    
     if (a = b) then
        writeln ('A é igual a B')
     else
        if (a &lt; b) then
              writeln ('B é maior que A')
        else
              writeln ('A é maior que B');
    end.

We can see that this code requires learning several concepts related to the language’s structure itself instead of focusing on the problem. For example, it requires parentheses and a semicolon at the end of a block, as well as the classic rule that you do not put a semicolon before else, because the semicolon is used to end programming blocks.

Pascal on Kind of Idea

Ruby as a First Programming Language!