I'll put a rec out for CodeSchool. They started mostly with ruby, but
they've expanded into a wide array of courses (only a few of which are
free). But they're slick, well thought-through affairs, and Try Ruby/Rails
for Zombies is still I think the best introduction to Rails out there.

http://www.codeschool.com/


On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I've heard similar good things about Codecademy from a friend who recently
> wanted to start learning programming along with his teenage son. It seems
> like a good gateway drug :) I introduced my 11-year-old to the
> Javascript-based animation tutorials on Khan Academy and he found them
> really fun. I have him use IRB to calculate his math homework. I don't care
> which, if any, language he prefers. It's more important to me that he's
> able to think "under the hood" a bit about computers, data, and what's
> possible.
>
> I've been thinking alot about how to introduce not only my kids, but some
> of our cataloging/technical staff to thinking "programmatically" or
> "computationally"[1] or whatever you want to call it. For me, Ruby will
> likely be the tool - especially since it's so easy to install on Windows
> now, too.
>
> In her wisdom, Diane Hillman (I think), pointed out the need for
> catalogers to be able talk to programmers. Personally, that's what I'm
> after... to equip people to think about problems, data, and networks
> differently, e.g. "No, you really don't have to look up each record
> individually in the catalog and check the link", etc.
>
>
> 1. http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/
>
> Jason Stirnaman
> Digital Projects Librarian
> A.R. Dykes Library
> University of Kansas Medical Center
> 913-588-7319
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Matthew
> Sherman [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data
> (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
>
> Getting back to the original point so noting some nice starting tools, I
> find http://www.codecademy.com to be a decent starting spot for those of
> us
> without much computer science background.  I am not sure what professional
> developers think of the site but I find it a helpful to tutorial to start
> getting a basic understanding of scripting, Ruby, JavaScript, Python,
> JQuery, APIs, ect.  Hope that helps.
>
> Matt Sherman
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
>
> > This is a terribly distorted view of Ruby: "If you want to make web
> pages,
> > learn Ruby", and you don't need to learn Rails to get the benefit of
> Ruby's
> > awesomeness. But, everyone will have their own opinions. There's no
> > accounting for taste.
> >
> > For anyone interested in learning to program and hack around with library
> > data or linked data, here are some places to start (heavily biased toward
> > the elegance of Ruby):
> >
> > http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Working_with_MaRC
> > https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+books
> > https://delicious.com/jstirnaman/ruby+tutorials
> > http://rdf.rubyforge.org/
> >
> > Jason
> >
> > Jason Stirnaman
> > Digital Projects Librarian
> > A.R. Dykes Library
> > University of Kansas Medical Center
> > 913-588-7319
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Joe
> > Hourcle [[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?
> >
> > On Feb 17, 2013, at 11:43 AM, John Fereira wrote:
> >
> > > I have been writing software "professionally" since around 1980 and
> > first encounterd perl in the early 1990s of so and have *always* disliked
> > it.   Last year I had to work on a project that was mostly developed in
> > perl and it reminded me how much I disliked it.  As a utility language,
> and
> > one that I think is good for beginning programmers (especially for those
> > working in a library) I'd recommend PHP over perl every time.
> >
> > I'll agree that there are a few aspects of Perl that can be confusing, as
> > some functions will change behavior depending on context, and there was a
> > lot of bad code examples out there.*
> >
> > ... but I'd recommend almost any current mainstream language before
> > recommending that someone learn PHP.
> >
> > If you're looking to make web pages, learn Ruby.
> >
> > If you're doing data cleanup, Perl if it's lots of text, Python if it's
> > mostly numbers.
> >
> > I should also mention that in the early 1990s would have been Perl 4 ...
> > and unfortunately, most people who learned Perl never learned Perl 5.
>  It's
> > changed a lot over the years.  (just like PHP isn't nearly as insecure as
> > it used to be ... and actually supports placeholders so you don't end up
> > with SQL injections)
> >
> > -Joe
> >
>