[ale] semi [OT] making learning ruby programming fun?

[Leam Hall]

<lots snipped>

Well, I'm looking at it a bit differently. It takes 10 years, on 
average, to get really good at most anything. Thus, what I want to be 
doing in 10 years influences what I'm learning today.

Following that logic I'd recommend looking at the domains the languages 
are best at and picking the language that is in your favorite domain. 
Want to be a web guy? PHP hands down. Performant applications? C. Next 
generation systems code? I'm betting Go will be the C++ of the next decade.

For my own self I'm happy being a Linux/Unix guy right now but want to 
grow my systems engineering skills. So the short list for me is Python 
and C, with Go in the back of my head. I'd rather learn C first and then 
Go so that I'm able to access the body of knowledge built up and then 
translate it better.

I will also note that Python seems to have pushed Java out of the hearts 
of academia. Fine by me!

Leam