Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. It's also dependent on your environment. You may or may not have a say in this, and chances are you'll have to work with code that others wrote. If you mess with systems, it's hard to avoid working with perl. Ruby is popular here, but relatively few jobs call for it, it's slow, and the support community is way smaller than it is for some of the other languages. PHP is decent for web stuff, but it's not a good all purpose language. Yes, you *can* do just about anything with it (presuming you don't need something it just doesn't do like multithreading), but if you're not root, you could easily find it wasn't allocated nearly enough memory or time to do what you want. It's also not fast even if it is considerably faster than ruby. Speed's no biggie if your program is calling something else that does the real work or if you don't have that much processing to do. But it could be a big deal if you have to cut through lots of data regularly. Even if you don't intend to do much coding, it's impossible to avoid working with a number of languages. Learn what you need, as you need it. If you're trying to figure out what to start with, use whatever the people you're most likely to turn to help use. The best resource (if you have access) is a willing local person who you can ask questions. kyle
[CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
This is an interesting and frustrating conversation. Most modern languages are capable of doing almost anything. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I have worked in many languages starting in Fortran, and, while I have favorites, I like the fact that I can be productive and efficient by concentrating on one language at a time. Because my day job is mostly Drupal, for me that language is PHP. When I started, I was working with ColdFusion (ok, maybe not really a language), Java (meh), and Python (++). I didn't love PHP or choose it, but I appreciated that it could do what I needed it to do. At the time, that work included a lot of XML manipulation. I think that PHP has a good toolset for dealing with XML. I am sure that there may be something better, but that really does not matter, since my team has sufficient facility with PHP to complete anything we take on and the experience and resources to do it with economy and efficiency. We haven't abandoned everything else. We use Python for server management — its AWS libraries sealed that deal — finally displacing Perl, and Ruby for DevOps (why this gets capitalized at all, I have no clue) and deployment. Solr keeps us vaguely in touch with Java. This boils down to: If it is your decision and you have a tool you prefer, use it. Thanks, Cary On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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 -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com
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 jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
If you're just learning to program, I would absolutely recommend an interpreted language like Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl, JavaScript etc. over something that is compiled like Java, C, or Go. These languages are almost always slower, but the immediate feedback is invaluable for learning. I find that Java and C are very hard to learn because you spend so many lines describing how something should be done (implementation) instead of what actions should be done. I love these kinds of sites for learning new languages: http://tryhaskell.org/ http://tryruby.org/ http://jsbin.com/ http://perltuts.com/try https://www.pythonanywhere.com/try-ipython/ http://writecodeonline.com/php/ -Justin On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Cary Gordon listu...@chillco.com wrote: This is an interesting and frustrating conversation. Most modern languages are capable of doing almost anything. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I have worked in many languages starting in Fortran, and, while I have favorites, I like the fact that I can be productive and efficient by concentrating on one language at a time. Because my day job is mostly Drupal, for me that language is PHP. When I started, I was working with ColdFusion (ok, maybe not really a language), Java (meh), and Python (++). I didn't love PHP or choose it, but I appreciated that it could do what I needed it to do. At the time, that work included a lot of XML manipulation. I think that PHP has a good toolset for dealing with XML. I am sure that there may be something better, but that really does not matter, since my team has sufficient facility with PHP to complete anything we take on and the experience and resources to do it with economy and efficiency. We haven't abandoned everything else. We use Python for server management — its AWS libraries sealed that deal — finally displacing Perl, and Ruby for DevOps (why this gets capitalized at all, I have no clue) and deployment. Solr keeps us vaguely in touch with Java. This boils down to: If it is your decision and you have a tool you prefer, use it. Thanks, Cary On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: The language you choose is somewhat dependent on the data you're working with. I don't find that Ruby or PHP are particularly good at dealing with XML. They're passable for data manipulation and migration, but I wouldn't use them to render large collections of structured XML data, like EAD or TEI collections, or whatever. Ethan On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.edu 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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 -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Matthew Sherman [matt.r.sher...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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 jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
I am going to second and third and fourth www.codeschool.com. I know codecademy gets a lot of love, but I'm pretty sure that's only because people don't know about Code School. I would turn to NetTuts courses for PHP, especially Laravel 4 (greatest PHP-thing ever), but that's *only because Code School focuses more on Ruby than PHP.* Not to belabor the point ... - well, yes, to belabor it: www.codeschool.com for the win. Michael / Front-End Librarian at www.ns4lib.com and The Web for Libraries Weekly -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of James Stuart Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 2:23 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) 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 jstirna...@kumc.eduwrote: 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Matthew Sherman [matt.r.sher...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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 jstirna...@kumc.edu 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 [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joe Hourcle [onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: 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. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: 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. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
I'm not advocating the Google CT lessons as the best way to learn Python. Karen, I really like your hacker space idea. Anyone else know of an online environment like that? Another option is maybe a Python IRC channel or a local meetup discussion list. For example, we have a really good Ruby meetup group here in KC that meets once a month. I also know between meetings that I can go to the mail list to get help with my Rails questions. I am interested more in the Google CT lessons in the Data Analysis and English-Language subjects as entry points into how to think differently about your work and about this thing you're hunched over for 8 hours a day. Sure, those lessons focus heavily on spreadsheet functions, but that's a familiar way to introduce the concepts. I think it could also be adapted to Ruby, Python, whatever. Jason Jason Stirnaman Digital Projects Librarian A.R. Dykes Library University of Kansas Medical Center 913-588-7319 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Karen Coyle [li...@kcoyle.net] Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 3:25 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?) On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: 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. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting started with Ruby and library-ish data (was RE: [CODE4LIB] You *are* a coder. So what am I?)
As far as python goes, this has a quick sense of pacing, and has a lot of interactive exercises, while building something pretty useful in the end. https://www.udacity.com/ (CS101) It goes into a little bit more theory then I think is useful for some folks, but it's still a great resource. On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote: On 2/18/13 12:53 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 2/18/2013 2:04 PM, Jason Stirnaman wrote: 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. Do you have an opinion of the google 'computational thinking' curriculum pieces linked off of that page you cite? For instance, at: http://www.google.com/edu/**computational-thinking/**lessons.htmlhttp://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/lessons.html I looked at the Beginning Python one[1], and I have to say that any intro to programming that begins with a giant table of mathematical functions is a #FAIL. Wow - how wrong can you get it? On the other hand, I've been going through the Google online python class [2] and have found it very easy to follow (it's youtubed), and the exercises are interesting. What I want next is more exercises, and someone to talk to about any difficulties I run into. I want a hands-on hacker space learning environment that has a live expert (and you wouldn't have to be terribly expert to answer a beginner's questions). It's very hard to learn programming alone because there are always multiple ways to solve a problem, and an infinite number of places to get stuck. kc [1] http://tinyurl.com/bcj894s [2] https://developers.google.com/**edu/python/https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ Or at: http://www.iste.org/learn/**computational-thinking/ct-**toolkithttp://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking/ct-toolkit -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
