In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how
to
program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I’ll explain
them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)
Now the problem is that their school runs Windows 98. We love FreeRIDE,
it’s
a good IDE, but it does not run under Windows 98. And that’s not good.
Their teacher is not happy about it any more as ruby seems hard on a
console. And that’s a pity.
So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?
The Ruby Eclipse Development tool seems to have lots of buttons and all
kinds of Java related stuff. We want to be clear for students so that’s
why
FreeRIDE seemed better…
Do you have any other suggestions? We just want a good IDE that
abstracts
the command prompt in Windows 98, so what do you suggest? We are
starting
to get desperate, we want to teach those students programming the good
way…
In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how to
program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I’ll explain them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)
See if Mondrian works in Win98 (not sure, but it’s worth a try)
SciTe should do what you want I believe; I’d use that because it’s
very simple, has syntax highlighting, and will allow you to run from
within it. I’m nto sure about Win98 support though…
The Ruby Eclipse Development tool seems to have lots of buttons and all
kinds of Java related stuff. We want to be clear for students so that’s
why FreeRIDE seemed better…
Do you have any other suggestions? We just want a good IDE that
abstracts the command prompt in Windows 98, so what do you suggest? We
are starting to get desperate, we want to teach those students
programming the good way…
You could try eric4 (currently available as snapshots). It is written in
Python but supports Ruby as well (including debugging support).
with this file. The need for an IDE comes later, with the need of
productivity.
Indeed. ~25 years ago when they were teaching us BASIC on
a 40-column display of an APPLE ][ appearing as fuzzy text
on these old TV sets, I don’t recall any of us being fearful
that we were dealing with text, without any GUI.
With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I’ll explain them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)
I don’t see the need for an IDE in your case. When you say that tou want
“To
get rid of the terminal fears”, are you talking about the fact of
typing “ruby myprog.rb” in the terminal ?
I think it’s essential, for someone who starts learning to program, to
understand the basis of what happens : that source code is not more than
a
simple text file, and that it can be run simply by calling the
interpreter
with this file. The need for an IDE comes later, with the need of
productivity.
So, what you want is just a text editor with syntax highlighting, and a
terminal by its side
Sorry, I have never developped with windows, so I cannot counsel you for
what
editor to choose.
I’m sure your student will surpass their fear of terminals ^^
Good luck with the courses !
simple text file, and that it can be run simply by calling the interpreter
Good luck with the courses !
–
Olivier R.
I tend to agree with Olivier but that is not my business and I am a baaad teacher, I was great support Olivier, was I not ;)? But
Olivier’s
advice might be the best way to handle the situation even if you think
it is
a bad didactic approach.
If you are really desperate a live CD with a Linux distribution
containing
RIDE might be your saver, as this is OT please feel free to contact me
off
list, unfortunately I do not know any life distribution containing Free
Ride
but a little research might be helpful.
I had done it myself if I had a little bit more time, hopefully I get
some
more time tomorrow so contact me if you like.
BTW I posted this to the list just in case somebody happened to know
such a
distribution.
'cause this is a Great List
By the way, may I suggest a lesson learned from years of trying to teach
my
sister programming:
Graphics BEFORE number crunching and text processing.
Ideally you will create a small ruby library on top of SDL that does
turtle
graphics or simple shapes and requires just a single ‘require ‘lib’’, no
code to create a window or reference it (since that IS scary) and start
by
letting them draw things.
THEN you will teach them how to crunch numbers so they can draw PRETTY
things (plots like the flower patterns resulting from simple
trigonometric
equations are a favorite, also munching squares and other such things).
THEN you teach them how to program text adventure games.
THEN you show them how to use the real SDL and also keyboard input from
it
so they can create Pong, and then you just let them play and give some
advice until the end of the year, pushing but only guiding, not MAKING
them
do any specific thing.
Just some tips from experience. Some of it is wrong (especially where
showing them the full SDL bindings, also there’s nothing on OO in my
plan,
or on ruby in particular as opposed to “Generic simple language”).
Anyone should feel free to comment or bash my ideas.
to understand the basis of what happens : that source code is not
more than a simple text file, and that it can be run simply by
calling the interpreter with this file. The need for an IDE comes
later, with the need of productivity.
Indeed. ~25 years ago when they were teaching us BASIC on
a 40-column display of an APPLE ][ appearing as fuzzy text on these
old TV sets, I don’t recall any of us being fearful
that we were dealing with text, without any GUI.
But a lot of us who worked with “real computers” refused to have
anything to do with a 40-column screen. Hell, most of the folks who
actually did stuff with their Altairs had an ADM-3. That was one of
the truly joyful things about the Commodore 64 – you could buy a real
color monitor for a reasonable price and not have to mess with RF
modulators, etc…
damn small linux can download ruby via a couple of clicks ( internet
connection required though ) http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
if the host boxes are powerful && have enough RAM knoppix might viable http://www.knoppix.org/ there should be a list somewhere on the site
listing contents of the cdrom
By the way, may I suggest a lesson learned from years of trying to teach my
sister programming:
Graphics BEFORE number crunching and text processing.
When I taught my brother to program, I started with text i/o. He had
great fun writing little quiz programs (ask a question, present a few
choices, wait for an answer, repeat), unit conversion programs, etc.
Text is more interactive than graphics that way.
BTW I posted this to the list just in case somebody happened to know
such a
distribution.
'cause this is a Great List
Cheers
Robert
It’s pretty easy to make custom live CDs these days, if you have
enough RAM and disk space. I actually think there’s a Rails LiveCD, and
I’m sure there’s a Rails “Virtual Appliance” – a VMware virtual machine
you can boot up in the free player or server.
Well there is really no IDE for Ruby on Windows, at best
you can get a text-editor-alike that runs code from within it
and captures its output, like SCITE. For windows stuff, I really
like the clean-ness of Notepad++, but I can’t get it to execute
Ruby code from within the editor.
RoRed seems nice and simple for Rails stuff, don’t know whether
all that Rails stuff gets in the way of it being a simple Ruby
editor, haven’t tried it.
Really though, for learning purposes, SCITE is your man.
FreeRIDE seems like such a mess at the moment, and crashes
lots.
As for your Win 98 requirement … well thats tough.
But the REAL joy came when we discovered the BASIC LINE command.
And with my sister, which was/is less of a gekk pre-programming-lessons,
I
could never get her interested in writing text games and fun things
involving text (my generation of programmers will ALLWAYS remember the
famous rocket ascii animation).
When I taught her “paper logo” (I just took a piece of paper and taught
her
LOGO commands, drawing them on the paper when executing) she got really
interested and not only did what I asked her to but thought a lot
forward
(she proposed variables and named procedures herself, after only about
half
an hour of polygon drawing).
Graphics are, in my opinion, the most “fun” kind of artistic
programming,
and the one where nice results are the simplest to get (and also, one
where
advanced programming yields even better results, see for example
fractals or
the amazing demos a pascal teacher I had showed us, with a 3D flaming
ball
or a waving flag…).
Komodo by ActiiveState does everything you want plus intellisense.
Works on Windows 98 and one license lets you install a copy on Mac,
Windows, and Linux. It will cost you $29 per student.
Oooh, re Komodo. Sorry. ActiveState’s product placement has
completely changed since I bought 3.5. 4.0 is now two products, Komodo
Edit (free) and Komodo IDE ($245). Yikes. I cannot vouch for the IDE
at this price. Unless they’ve greatly revamped and improved the
product then I would probably not buy it at that price. That said,
version 3.5 was a bargain at $29.
