[rubiquity]

I don't think it's just that Ruby isn't a good intro to programming. I don't think Object Oriented languages are a good intro to programming. OOP is just way too abstract. In the teaching I've done (some adults and kids) they tend to get the basics of FP where everything is just a list much better than the weirdness of objects.

[claystu]

I think objects are intuitive. After all, we live in a world made of objects.

What confuses newcomers is the computer science vocabulary that everyone insists on using when teaching objects. I am a big fan of object oriented programming, but the vocabulary and terrible metaphors of introductory books reads like punishment.

The only language that has done a worse job explaining a simple concept is Lisp with macros. My God! It's like they're trying to keep Macro's a secret.

[dragonwriter]

> I think objects are intuitive. After all, we live in a world made of objects.

We do not live in a world made of object in the OOP sense. (On a more fundamental level, we don't live in a world made of objects at all so much as a world we are prone to arbitrarily -- and not always consistently -- break up into objects for the convenience of thinking about it, but those objects still aren't OOP-style objects.)

[claystu]

Your "OOP sense" is exactly what I meant about confusing things with computer science jargon. To a beginner, treating objects as structs with functions is all they need to know.