

I want to teach my wife to code...where do I start? - marcamillion

I just got the bright idea of trying to convince my wife to learn coding. Why not, eh?<p>Here is the rub, it's very foreign to her and she isn't particularly 'tech-savvy'.<p>I do mostly Ruby and Rails dev, so that's where I am going to start. I have a CS degree, but she doesn't.<p>Where do I start and how do I progress? There are many things I take for granted, like what an 'int' is, and words are called 'strings' - which are a series of letters, not an actual 'word'.<p>She has no experience with any of that stuff.<p>I am thinking of starting with something like TryRuby.org - where she can get immediate gratification, but then supplementing it with some 'theory'.<p>Thoughts?
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andrewhillman
I don't think it is necessary to start her off w/ RoR. The web was founded
without RoR so no need to start her off with RoR. How about teaching her very
basic html first? Creating anchor text/hyperlinks and then having her ftp it
online will be gratifying. Stick to the basics. It will probably keep you sane
while you teach her. Good luck.

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marcamillion
No need to FTP it....can just run it locally.

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andrewhillman
Of course, but it probably would be more gratifying to her to FTP it, see the
process and be able to go online to check it out. Or else she might be like,
what do you mean locally? Then a bunch of questions will follow... How do I
access it from my computer? What's the web address? I am on the phone with
Judy, how can she see what I did?

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hsshah
So I have been teaching Computer technology to kids in schools and also to
non-techies as a hobby for a while.

I urge you to NOT start with technology. From her interests, identify
something that can be augmented with programming first. [for example, she
wants to share her hobby via a blog]. Just show her what is possible in that
instance with knowledge of coding. From there work backwards to show what she
needs to learn to achieve this goal. You will find her lot more motivated.

I talked about this with Hack Education's Audrey just yesterday. Some more
thoughts captured by her here: <http://www.hackeducation.com/2012/03/06/harry-
shah/>

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marcamillion
Sounds like an interesting idea, the blog thing won't work - because she
doesn't have the time/nor desire to blog about it.

But you may be on to something here.

Thanks for the link and idea!

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LaaT
Is she really interested in learning? Or is she just being nice to you
accepting this?

Anyway, I'd start with HTML and Javascript. More familiar territory for a
complete beginner.

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RodgerTheGreat
Honestly, HTML may not be a bad idea for a total beginner. It's not a
programming language, but it allows you to introduce a number of ideas that
are the building blocks of programming- the distinction between 'code' and
rendered output, nesting, quotations and escapes...

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marcamillion
Interesting ideas about HTML. Never thought about that.

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gwillis13
If she really is motivated to a degree to learn code. I would start first with
theory, and explain it to her as if she was learning a new language.

With that said, IMO would start her off with logic and OOP. That's if she
really wants to code.

If it's just a simple understanding of how the web works, the posters comments
about HTML would suffice as a starting point.

