New to coding, lost as hell

[Stephen None]

I've been looking into coding for a while now and would really like to
start. Thanks to Google and a few friends I found Ruby and think it
would be an excellent place to start.

I've installed ruby (It says it's Ruby 182-15, I'm sure it's outdated
now, since I did it several months back) and started to read through
several guides (Learning Ruby and Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby). But
the things don't match up to the stuff which comes with the Ruby
install, or it's aimed at a different OS.

I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no reason to
update) and the Ruby install comes with some documentation and FreeRIDE
and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is the thing to use for basic stuff.
So I open it and type in something basic (Print 'hello world') and run
it.

Nothing runs when I do it. The terminal says "Cannot find file 'CMD' <or
one of it components>. Check to ensure path and filename are correct and
that all required libraries are avaiable." and FreeRide's output view
says

">ruby C:\ruby\freeride\untitled1.rb

exit".

So really I'm getting no where really fast.

The guides don't seem to be much help either. They seem to drag
everything out with totally useless examples which explain nothing. I'm
not really a fan of guides written for complete idiots where instead of
going "Try this, this is why it works, the commands involve do X,Y,Z",
which I find much easier to read and can just get down to work with.

So really I'm looking for some help.. A link to a no non-sense guide (I
mean I love cartoon foxs and all but..) and some help as to how the hell
you get a decent program to use the guide with working correctly.

Thanks for any help.
Mikari

 

[Devin Mullins]

I've been looking into coding for a while now and would really like to
start. Thanks to Google and a few friends I found Ruby and think it
would be an excellent place to start.

Awesome!

I'm currently running Windows 98

Yeah, that's you're problem. I don't think the installer's fine-tuned
for 9x. I don't know how to make FreeRIDE work (possibly by making a
cmd.bat file that's just a shill for command.com), but try opening a DOS
prompt and running 'irb'. If that doesn't work, you're going to need to
add the directory containing ruby.exe to your PATH environment variable
(Control Panel -> System -> etc.). Sorry, but you're going to have to
take command of your operating system a bit.

Also, try http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/ . It's a Ruby guide for newbies
to programming. It's not going to help with your installation woes, but
it'll make a lot more sense than modulesaise (sadly).

Oh, and should all your installation attempts fail:
http://tryruby.hobix.com/

Devin

 

[James Britt]

Stephen None wrote:
...

So really I'm getting no where really fast.

The guides don't seem to be much help either. They seem to drag
everything out with totally useless examples which explain nothing. I'm
not really a fan of guides written for complete idiots where instead of
going "Try this, this is why it works, the commands involve do X,Y,Z",
which I find much easier to read and can just get down to work with.

So really I'm looking for some help.. A link to a no non-sense guide (I
mean I love cartoon foxs and all but..) and some help as to how the hell
you get a decent program to use the guide with working correctly.

You try

http://ruby-doc.org/gettingstarted/

and browse around ruby-doc.org for other stuff.



James Britt

--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
http://www.artima.com/rubycs/ - Ruby Code & Style: Writers wanted
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
http://www.30secondrule.com - Building Better Tools

 

[Bill Guindon]

[snip]

I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no reason to
update) and the Ruby install comes with some documentation and FreeRIDE
and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is the thing to use for basic stuff.
So I open it and type in something basic (Print 'hello world') and run
it.

Nothing runs when I do it. The terminal says "Cannot find file 'CMD' <or
one of it components>. Check to ensure path and filename are correct and
that all required libraries are avaiable." and FreeRide's output view
says

">ruby C:\ruby\freeride\untitled1.rb

cmd is the 32 bit version of command.com. I haven't run 98 in a long
time, but I'm betting you can find command.com somewhere in the
windows/system folder or windows/cmd, or some such. If you can find
it, try making a copy of it, and renaming it to cmd.com.

If that fails, try putting a cmd.bat batch file in the windows dir,
with something something like the following:
command %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

Not sure if either of the above will work, but it's worth a shot.

 

[Adam Shelly]

I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no reason to

update) and the Ruby install comes with some documentation and FreeRIDE
and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is the thing to use for basic stuff.
So I open it and type in something basic (Print 'hello world') and run
it.

Did you try SciTE? As far as I remember, it worked out of the box
when I installed, no configuration needed.
Just open it, write a test command, save it with a .rb extension, and hit F=
5.

-Adam

 

[Adam Sroka]

Did you try SciTE? As far as I remember, it worked out of the box
when I installed, no configuration needed.
Just open it, write a test command, save it with a .rb extension, and hit F5.

-Adam

According to the wiki, FreeRIDE is built on top of SciTE, which is also
why it is bundled with it.

BTW, to the original poster: if you are not interested in upgrading from
Windows 98, could you be convinced to try one of the many great Linux or
BSD distros? I can see why you wouldn't want to spend $299 for the
latest Windows, but 98 is perhaps the worst OS ever written (Actually,
the "perhaps" is not called for.) And, learning a *nix would be a good
intro to programming since many of the concepts are the same (And using
irb isn't that different from shell programming.) Just a thought.

 

[Stephen None]

According to the wiki, FreeRIDE is built on top of SciTE, which is also
why it is bundled with it.

BTW, to the original poster: if you are not interested in upgrading from
Windows 98, could you be convinced to try one of the many great Linux or
BSD distros? I can see why you wouldn't want to spend $299 for the
latest Windows, but 98 is perhaps the worst OS ever written (Actually,
the "perhaps" is not called for.) And, learning a *nix would be a good
intro to programming since many of the concepts are the same (And using
irb isn't that different from shell programming.) Just a thought.

I've tried Ubuntu (on a live CD) and like it. Right now I'm stuck on
dial up though, thanks to living in the middle of no where. But
Broadband just got installed here and I'll be upgrading to ADSL post
Christmas. Since my modem is a Winmodem I can't switch to Ubuntu right
now (or I would.. all the programs I used are on Ubuntu's default
install). I've got 98 locked down so it can't breath without my
permission right now, so it's useable for surfing, playing the odd game
and running Gaim. Reboots every few days are annoying, but it just about
works well enough to live with as long as you don't look at it funny.

I'll try the fixs above tomorrow. Using Dos worked but you can't do very
much with just dos, but I guess it is a start. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Devin Mullins]

98 is perhaps the worst OS ever written (Actually, the "perhaps" is
not called for.)

I beg to differ. Especially considering the hair I've pulled out trying
to get my parents' ME system not to kick itself in the groin.

Devin
(Not to put lightly the amount of enjoyment that working in an
unsupported, dysfunctional operating system gives them.)

 

[Adam Sroka]

I beg to differ. Especially considering the hair I've pulled out
trying to get my parents' ME system not to kick itself in the groin.

Devin
(Not to put lightly the amount of enjoyment that working in an
unsupported, dysfunctional operating system gives them.)

Wasn't ME essentially just an upgrade to 98? 2000 was the an incremental
improvement on the NT kernel, and ME was 98 repackaged. It wasn't until
XP that the full product line moved to the NT codebase.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Wasn't ME essentially just an upgrade to 98? 2000 was the an incremental
improvement on the NT kernel, and ME was 98 repackaged. It wasn't until
XP that the full product line moved to the NT codebase.

In short:
Microsoft wanted to move everything to an NT base. Windows 2000
Professional was supposed to be the next step for upgrade from both
Windows NT Workstation and Windows 98. Microsoft got really stupid
(moreso than usual) about how they handled the upgrade path, though, and
there were a number of accessibility issues that a business could
tolerate, but a home user couldn't, such as the extremely limited
hardware compatibility list for Win2k (which largely arose because of
the ridiculous hoops MS was making hardware vendors jump through to get
API specs for Win2k and the fact that Microsoft put a pretty strict
time-limit on submissions for inclusion in the plug-and-play capability
of the OS. There were other problems as well, such as the unnecessarily
(for an end-user) complex user accounts management, and so on.

Win2k was turning out to be a pretty tremendous flop on the home-front,
and Microsoft decided it had to do something quickly to
recapture/maintain its strangelhold on the end user market. They
decided that A) in the long run they needed to rethink their unified OS
architecture (thus the beginning of the development of XP) and B) they
needed to do something quick, so that there was something new from MS
that people would buy to replace the aging Windows 98.

So, in the interim, they cobbled together Windows Millenium Edition,
which was essentially Windows 98 with a bunch of wacky widgets and
"web-enhanced" features/bugs piled on top in a sort of functional house
of cards. Ultimately, XP became a compromise, since the NT codebase
alone wasn't going to prove very marketable (as demonstrated by the
Win2k failure): it became sort of a mishmash of the Win32/NT and Chicago
(basically, Win98) architectures.

Hm. I get the impression this is sorta off-topic. I'll drop it before
I get really carried away.

 

[Steve Litt]

I beg to differ. Especially considering the hair I've pulled out
trying to get my parents' ME system not to kick itself in the
groin.

Ya know, I beg to differ too. Any GUI that screams with a Pentium
II300 and 32MB, with a couple hundred Meg of disk has something
going for it. If it weren't for Win98's instability and the legal
ramifications of using proprietary software, I'd still be using it.

Luckily, a gigaherz processor with 512 MB Ram and 40GB disk is dirt
cheap, so all modern Linuxes are perfectly runnable on < $600
hardware, especially if you use IceWM instead of KDE or Gnome.

Steve Litt
http://www.troubleshooters.com
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Steve Litt]

I've been looking into coding for a while now and would really
like to start. Thanks to Google and a few friends I found Ruby
and think it would be an excellent place to start.

I've installed ruby (It says it's Ruby 182-15, I'm sure it's
outdated now, since I did it several months back) and started to
read through several guides (Learning Ruby and Why's (poignant)
guide to Ruby). But the things don't match up to the stuff which
comes with the Ruby install, or it's aimed at a different OS.

I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no
reason to update) and the Ruby install comes with some
documentation and FreeRIDE and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is
the thing to use for basic stuff. So I open it and type in
something basic (Print 'hello world') and run it.

Hi Stephen,

I don't know anything about FreeRIDE and SciTE, nor have I ever run
Ruby on w98, but try this tutorial:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/ruby/basictutorial.htm

Start by copying and pasting the code so that there's no chance of
transcription errors. One thing -- If you're using Windows, you'll
need to delete the line saying:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

I think what you do is tell the operating system that anything
ending in .rb should be run through the ruby.exe or whatever, and
then delete that line. If I'm wrong, others can tell you the right
way.

If you don't trust the editors to which you refer, start with
Notepad -- at least you can trust it, even if it's braindead and
can only edit small files.

Welcome to programming!

SteveT

Steve Litt
http://www.troubleshooters.com
(e-mail address removed)

 

[James Edward Gray II]

One thing -- If you're using Windows, you'll need to delete the
line saying:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

No need for that. Ruby on Windows is not bothered by a Shebang
line. Not only that, but it *will* parse them for options.

#!/usr/local/bin/ruby -w

That will turn on warnings, even on Windows.

James Edward Gray II

 

[William James]

I've been looking into coding for a while now and would really like to
start. Thanks to Google and a few friends I found Ruby and think it
would be an excellent place to start.

I've installed ruby (It says it's Ruby 182-15, I'm sure it's outdated
now, since I did it several months back) and started to read through
several guides (Learning Ruby and Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby). But
the things don't match up to the stuff which comes with the Ruby
install, or it's aimed at a different OS.

I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no reason to
update) and the Ruby install comes with some documentation and FreeRIDE
and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is the thing to use for basic stuff.
So I open it and type in something basic (Print 'hello world') and run
it.

Nothing runs when I do it. The terminal says "Cannot find file 'CMD' <or
one of it components>. Check to ensure path and filename are correct and
that all required libraries are avaiable." and FreeRide's output view
says

">ruby C:\ruby\freeride\untitled1.rb

So really I'm getting no where really fast.

For now, forget FreeRIDE and SciTE. All you need is the Ruby
executable
and a text file that contains your program.

Open a DOS box and make sure that the directory containing ruby.exe
is in your path. (Type "path<Enter>".) If it isn't type something
like
path c:\bin\ruby\bin;%path%

Move to the directory where your program file is by typing something
like
cd \myprogs\ruby

Let's say your program is named "hello.rb". Type this:
ruby hello.rb

To run the program again, press the Up-arrow key once to recall
the command line and then press Enter.
That's all there is to it. The same method would work for programs in
Awk, Python, Perl, etc. (except that Awk needs "-f", as in "awk -f
hello.awk".)

To make this easier in the future, put a Command Prompt icon on your
desktop. Click on Start/Programs/Accessories and right-click on
"Command Prompt"; select "Send to Desktop". (I'm using windoze 2000;
you may have to alter this slightly for win98.)

If your Ruby installer didn't put the Ruby directory in the path, then
right-click on the Command Prompt icon, select "Properties" and add
this at the end of the "Target:" line:
/K c:\myDOSstartup.bat

myDOSstartup.bat should be a text file containing a path command
to add Ruby to the path and any DOSkey macros (aliases) that
you want to use.

 

[James Toomey]

Try opening the SciTe editor and typing
puts 'Hi There'
Now hit F5 to run this one-line script. Notice it wants you to save it
first. (This is so the SciTe editor knows what kind of program you're
running--if you give it a *.vbs extension, it knows this is a VbScript
file; if you give it a *.rb extension, it knows this is a Ruby file.)
Name it test.rb **and be sure*** to put it in a folder without spaces
in the name. Try putting in c:\temp. I have Windows 98 and it caused me
problems when I would save it to the "My Documents" folder because this
has spaces in the name and SciTe wouldn't run the script.
Now you should see the words "Hi There" appear on the right pane. The
right pane might be hidden; put your mouse over on the right border and
drag to the left. This was another problem I had because I couldn't
figure out why the result wasn't appearing, but it was because the
right pane was hidden.
Let me know if this works.