The big thing now is agile development.  Its this buzzword term for something really simple.  I always think of it in terms of the true meaning of the word “agile.”  Agile programs can move around and adapt to what is coming quickly and easily.  Thank goodness the days of the 10,000 line Perl programs are over, right?  Agile development is all about lean, mean programs that capitalize on the more intuitive semantic markup of modern languages.  Its the death of procedural programming.  If you’re fighting the object-oriented thing, now would be a good time to stop.  Most importantly, agile dev promotes teamwork, structure and scalability.  Its a good time to be starting in this field.

Ruby on Rails has been the language du jour for me since I landed in a RoR environment about 6 months ago.  It is probably the coolest language I’ve come across thus far simply because, well, its simple.  However, it is extremely object-oriented, and that can be a tough concept to grasp.  It has been for me.

One of the most unfortunate things about starting out in programming is that so much of the material assumes some prior experience.  I’m talking about the 750 page, three inch thick books covering every little minute detail on a language or framework.  I can’t pick one of those up and learn anything, because my frustration with the depth of the material in the second chapter clouds my ability to focus.  I know I’m not the only one.

Why I’m really writing this: I found a great book for anyone who wants to start programming on the web.  It is RoR specific, but trust me… its a good language to cut your teeth on, and its almost worth it to learn Ruby just so you can use this book.  The book is called “Learn to Program” by Chris Pine and is part of the Pragmatic Programmers series.  If you read that whole series, you’d probably have all the tools you need to get it done on the net.  What makes this particular book so wonderful is that it assumes no prior knowledge, it starts small and it moves slowly.  When you’re just beginning as a programmer the most important thing is to beat the simple ideas into your head.  You don’t start building a castle from the top.  There are exercises at the end of every chapter that allow you to cement what you have just read.  I feel like it is probably the best intro-level hands-on programming book I’ve come across, and the more I read the less I’m afraid of that 1000 page Rails book.