Ask HN: Help I have to mentor some programmers

[curej]

I'm a soft-spoken typical introverted geek who doesn't like being in the spotlight. I'm the only member of my tech department (small department; big company) who knows Ruby and my boss has tasked me with teaching Ruby to two PHP developers who are not very technically ambitious. Nor are they interested in learning Ruby. How do I make my lessons compelling enough to reach people who may be resistant to learning this technology? I've been reading Garr Reynolds book "Presentation Zen" but find it hard to apply to programming presentations where a lot of syntax information and concepts needs to be conveyed that are often difficult to illustrate visually (especially for someone not very graphically oriented like myself).

[brianto2010]

I am not sure if this will work or not, but here is an idea:

Instead of thinking of teaching as a 'presentation' of sorts, try changing teaching into a conversation. Don't talk at the developers, put them (and yourself) into a low-stress casual environment.

Try a 'translation' approach: Ask the developers to talk about what they know about PHP. For instance, they might talk about accessing a MySQL database via PHP. First, have them write a script in PHP that modifies a database. Then, slowly write a script in Ruby that does the same thing. Explain what you are writing as you go. Show and explain all intermediary steps. Invite them to ask questions. That is essential. The main point of this method is to draw parallels between PHP and Ruby. Question them periodically on 'hard' topics to make sure they understand.

Be sure they have a Ruby interpreter in front of them so they can interactively learn themselves. Encourage them to explore while you are conversing with them. Encourage them to take notes. However, don't go too overboard with introducing new material.

Afterward, give them rote drills on the things you guys talked about. Give a ton of those drills. Make them up on the spot! Don't expect them to do all of them, though.

Repeat that process.

As I said before, I have no clue if this would work or not; it's only an idea.

[curej]

All very good suggestions. Thank you.

I've been trying to think of ways to illustrate the code in a graphical way but it's not really working for me. A conversational approach makes more sense. Thanks for all the tips.