Programming languages

Today I took a look at several object oriented programming languages and wonder if I can give programming a whack just for the hell of it. I am not particularly good at math, but from what I hear people who have a very decent sense of structure, and complex problems often times do good at programming. I'm not saying I am a rubix cube freak, or a word problem wonder, but I know that if I try hard enough at something - I can't fail. There are no grades, and most of all, I can do this at my own pace. So my brother John spoke with me about languages, and asked me what my first pick of the litter would be and I immediately said Ruby. He seemed baffled as to why I would pick a language such as Ruby, or perhaps he was happy...I cannot tell, but since he is the guru of code I went along and answered. I think that Ruby in itself deserves more attention. It's a language of flexibilty in that you can take bits of code, and make them references only instead of objects themselves. For instance, as an analogy - I take an apple, and put it in a pot, and boil it. This leads to a boiled apple. In Ruby, the apple you put in the pot still exists as an apple, and doesn't change form. The results are the same - a boiled apple will come out of the pot, but the apple you started with is still there. This concept seems kind of blah even to me, but it's very interesting to see what you can do with it. It means that no matter what you do to the code, you still have a very strong base to work off of. There are a lot of programming languages out there that take object orientation and make coding a complete headache, and things do not mesh well with them. A good example is C++. While it is a great language that changed the world, it isn't the best of the best any longer. I see Ruby as coming up to usurp its qualities in the best way possible - by making it easy for the developer. Who knows, perhaps I will get into this more, perhaps I'm just acting strange. One thing is for sure though, XUL + Mac OS 10.3.9 = really fucking slow. Java in this OS has taken a memory sucking nose dive. I have no clue why either.