I’m reading Chris P.s Learn to program and I am on “Getting Started”
page 17
It says to download the latest version from rubyinstaller.org which I
did. After that it says to make a new desktop folder and name it
programs. Done.
Now click the programs folder open and right-click in the
folder->New->Select Ruby P… Which no such file exists. What do I
do?
I have already downloaded the sciTE text editor and tried saving a blank
one to create a .rb file but no luck.
Please help!
Many thanks 
even i am new member dnt knw anythng nt even startd learning so i am
sorry
Hi Joshua,
I might be able to help. Are you familiar with the command line at all?
On Mon, 2013-11-18 at 17:55 +0100, Joshua P. wrote:
I have already downloaded the sciTE text editor and tried saving a blank
one to create a .rb file but no luck.Please help!
Many thanks
I do not have the book – seems not to be free…
Guess you use Windows?
Before you can learn to program, you have to learn how to install
software on your computer, and how to create a textfile. Both very basic
operations – maybe there exists tutorials for your operating system, or
a friend can tell you how to do it. Please note, only downloading a file
is not sufficient, you may have to unpack and install the software.
From your quoted text, I guess your task was simple to create a
textfile. For that you can use an arbitrary texteditor, even a word
processing program, when you ensure that you saved the file content as
plain text (ASCII). Ruby programs are plain text files, generally named
with a file extension .rb .
Best luck,
Stefan S.
Yes Stefan, I use windows XP, I am trying to teach myself programming
from as a complete beginner. I have read up some of the basic concepts
on Hackety Hack and am now trying to use Chris P.s book ‘Learn to
program’
I have installed Ruby 1.9.3 on my computer using an installer from here:
Downloads but am unsure if it is definitely
working.
This is the instructions I was given by the book:
“First, let’s install Ruby. Go get the One-Click Installer from the
website
(http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl) by clicking Download
and
then clicking the highest-numbered version of Ruby you see there
(version
1.8.6-26 as of this writing). When you run it, it will ask you where
you want to install Ruby and which parts of it you want installed. Just
accept all the defaults.
Now let’s make a folder on your desktop in which you’ll keep all of your
programs. Right-click your desktop, select New, and then select Folder.
Name it something truly memorable, such as programs. Now doubleclick
the folder to open it.
To make a blank Ruby program, right-click in the folder, select New,
and then select Ruby P… You can rename the file if you want,
but make sure to keep the .rb file extension, since that’s what tells
your
computer this is a Ruby program (and not an email or a picture of Mr.
Bean or something).
Now, when you installed Ruby, you also installed a really nice text
editor called SciTE (which is what I use when I’m on Windows or Linux).
To use it to edit your new program, right-click your program, and select
Edit. (When you get to the next chapter, you’ll even write a program”
I’ve tried turning a text file into an .rb extention but it wont give me
the option. How should i do this? Is there a way to check if ruby
installer is working on my laptop?
When I got to the installer section: ‘Installation Destination and
optional tasks.’ It asked me if I wanted 3 potional tasks: '1. Install
Tcl/Tk support. 2.Add Ruby executables to your PATH 3.associate .rb and
.rbw files with this ruby installation.
I dont understand any of these and the default is all 3 are unselected,
so I didn’t select any of them. Was this the right thing to do?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thank you!
Stefan S.
Thank you so much Wayne, I really appreciate your help!
If anyone else also has more info on some of the problems list I’ll be
very greatful to hear it 
I am past this stage!!! No longer stuck right now, thank you all again!
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013, Joshua P. wrote:
Yes Stefan, I use windows XP, I am trying to teach myself programming
from as a complete beginner. I have read up some of the basic concepts
on Hackety Hack and am now trying to use Chris P.s book ‘Learn to
program’
I typically install the Cygwin tools when I’m working on Windows and I
have had good experiences with the version of Ruby that is included.
I’m
already a Linux guy, so I know my way around that toolset.
Just a thought.
– Matt
It’s not what I know that counts.
It’s what I can remember in time to use.
Would it be useful to dual-boot my Windows machine when using Ruby? I
keep
hearing Ruby is optimized on iOS. Don’t really want to buy a new comp,
but
am sort of hesitant to dual-boot.
Joshua:
You definitely want to add ruby to your path, that way you don’t have to
include the path each time you try to use it. At this point in time, I
would ignore the tcl/tk support (once you get the hang of Ruby you may
want to explore tcl/tk more, but I would not recommend you dive right
now). When I was working on a Windows machine, I did associate .rb files
with ruby, but I think that’s more of a personal choice. What that does
is notifies the operating system (Windows in your case) what application
to use if you double-click on them using the GUI. Since 100% of my
scripts are non-GUI based (I use the command line/terminal to use them),
I’m not sure I gained anything by doing this, but I never saw the harm
in doing it.
I have Chris’ book at home. I’ll take a look at it and see if I can make
any other solid suggestions to you tonight.
Wayne
HmmiOS seems like a curious choice.
I think a more conventional choice would be do run a Linux virtual
machine.
Maybe set up an Ubuntu or Debian, depending on your comfort level?
Ah sorry, didn’t mean I was going to dual-boot iOS. Just trying to
figure
out if dual-booting. I only mentioned iOS because I keep hearing that is
the OS that Ruby devs prefer. My comfort level is in the negatives haha.
Any recommendations on where to start reading up on running a Linux VM?
Thanks!
On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Thomas Murphy
I don’t think they meant iOS. iOS is what runs on the iPad, iPhone, and
iPod touch devices. However, this is not the operating system most
people are using Ruby with. There is a very slick application that
allows you write ruby code and have it spit out proper iOS applications
(sorry but forgot the name of that tool, just saw it demonstrated a
couple of years ago at a Ruby conference). Most pure Ruby developers are
probably using some UNIX version (Mac OS X, Linux…all 1,000 flavors),
but there is a fair amount of Window users Using Ruby, so don’t discount
using Windows for developing Ruby code. Ruby itself is agnostic to the
operating system. It’s not until you dive into developing GUI elements
that you might want to do some additional work since you will have to
make some occasional changes to your code for specific operating
systems.
Look at VMware’s site for information on using a VM. There are many free
and low cost VM sources out there, but VMware has a ton of information
on using VMs.
Wayne
Let me point you to these two links. I don’t personally use Windows, so
maybe others can chime in here:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tired-of-windows-8-how-to-dual-boot-windows-ubuntu/
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013, Jason K. wrote:
Ah sorry, didn’t mean I was going to dual-boot iOS. Just trying to figure
out if dual-booting. I only mentioned iOS because I keep hearing that is
the OS that Ruby devs prefer. My comfort level is in the negatives haha.
Any recommendations on where to start reading up on running a Linux VM?
Last time I saw Matz presenting, he was still using Linux for all his
development work.
For desktop use, I recommend VirtualBox. Grab an iso of your preferred
Linux and mount it as a virtual CD in VirtualBox. I know folks who
recommend Linux Mint very highly. I’ve been running KUbuntu on my
netbook
for over 3 years with good results and all my other systems run CentOS.
Ubuntu or Mint are probably your best choices
– Matt
It’s not what I know that counts.
It’s what I can remember in time to use.
“Would it be useful to dual-boot my Windows machine when using Ruby? I
keep
hearing Ruby is optimized on iOS. Don’t really want to buy a new comp,
but am sort of hesitant to dual-boot.”
Eh? If you make such claims please also add your source.
I never heard that Ruby is optimized for iOS.
I misspoke before and it’s snowballed. Apologies. I was basing this off
outdated information as found here.
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013, Jason K. wrote:
Would it be useful to dual-boot my Windows machine when using Ruby? I keep
hearing Ruby is optimized on iOS. Don’t really want to buy a new comp, but
am sort of hesitant to dual-boot.
If you don’t have the background, probably not. If you want to
experiment, you might try setting up Ubuntu on a thumb drive configured
to
use the extra space as persistent storage.
Other than that, the Cygwin tools give you a lot of the typical
Unix/Linux
command line tools. Maybe that’s useful to you.
– Matt
It’s not what I know that counts.
It’s what I can remember in time to use.
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