I got interested in the possibility of learning Ruby after seeing Ruby for Kids: teach programming by writing games in Ruby on Reddit last month.
I’m still not “ready” to dive in, but I did want to line up a few resources, which I’ve culled from the original Reddit post:
- Ruby for Kids. It’s just a website with links to various other places, like Gosu, which is a 2d game library for Ruby, but also with some screencasts intended to get you started.
- Suggested by a Redditor, “Hackety Hack will teach you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up. No previous programming experience is needed!” Just my kind of thing. Seems to be a package with all the bits you need to get started.
- Quby also looks kind of interesting, presumably it’s based on Ruby, but I haven’t had much time to dig in. Mostly for playing games, which is fine.
Finally, here’s another Reddit post that could be helpful as well: I wrote a Ruby script modeled after today’s XKCD alt-text, but also as an inspiration for the kind of program that regular people might decide to write.