On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:45 AM, Kyle King <[email protected]> wrote: > Shoes has always, to me anyway, pioneered the idea that anyone should be > able to write a simple gui. That programming little apps should be fun and > easy. But Shoes isn't just a toy to teach children. Although it is best > suited for teaching, it also has the very real potential to be a practical, > everyday utility in a ruby programmer's toolbox. I can honestly say that > I've used Shoes at work to write little one-time guis for people that aren't > comfortable with the command line.
I find this passage, and much recent discussion on this mailing list quite curious. Why is Shoes best for educational purposes? It seems, in fact, that some of the ambiguity and quirks of the Ruby language make that task quite a chore in certain moments. That said, I'd love to see it used increasingly in school settings, and I think Ruby is probably less painful than a great many other languages. Perhaps this is what it all boils down to. Anyway, no big deal or argument here, just an observation. Personally, I'm more interested in the "easy GUI" part, though their is a lurking educator in me. Sadly, I don't think I've yet got the maturity of patience to seriously consider teaching. -- Seth Thomas Rasmussen http://greatseth.com
