Ruby Shoes!

Everyone knows of course (or should!) about Dorothy's famous ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz:

they are justly iconic.








But have you seen this icon before?

These are also ruby shoes! 

Let me explain. From time-to-time I do some coding/programming, since I began using computers in the days when computers came with built-in programming languages; in those far-off days the only way you could have a program is if you wrote one (my first computer was a ZX-80, R50 at the time from South Africa). The languages I learnt back then were BASIC, LOGO, and PASCAL. Later on, I actually posted a few programs online for Mac OS 7,8, and 9. 

Well, recently I've been tinkering with PYTHON and RUBY. RUBY... aha! RUBY is quite special I think.

It got me considering how I might be able to teach some RUBY at school to the students. Surfing the net I came across SHOES, which is a mini-GUI kit for RUBY. When students start learning something they want to see quick results, and SHOES certainly provides quick results. Like RUBY itself beginners can see results from the get-go. I think it might be what educators are looking for. And it's not even difficult to get hold of. It's already in the Ubuntu/Mint/Peppermint repositories, works as call-to app, and (obviously) runs on ruby. More on this next week...